The Existential Joys of the Mormon Bible
Written: Jun 25 '05 (Updated Jun 25 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: interesting stories, great speeches, fascinating symbolism
Cons: not to be taken at face value, requires judgment and common sense
The Bottom Line: All scripture is a comic book taken literally. This one has value if used as inspiration for common-sense values of truth, justice and compassion.
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| bilavideo's Full Review: The Book of Mormon Books |
I find it amusing to see the Book of Mormon listed on epinions, but not as amusing as the "ratings divide" between "true believers" and "infidels." Those who accept its supernatural claims are quick to give it two thumbs up. Those who doubt those claims - or think Joseph Smith should burn in Hell - give it two thumbs down.
And yet, the book is worth a review on its own merits - without pulling in God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, all the angels you can dance on the head of a pin, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Billy Graham, the Tanners, Hugh Nibley or "the still small voice of the spirit."
For my money, those who rate the Book of Mormon on the basis of their acceptance of its claims are missing a chrosome - as well as the point of rating it on epinions. It's a book, for crying out loud. And it's a very influential one at that. I don't have to be a Muslim to put the Qur'an on a required reading list. I don't have to be a commie to read Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Any text that can start a worldwide religious movement, create a prophet out of a farmboy, and inspire the first of the Sherlock Holmes series (A Study in Scarlet) is at least worth an Oprah-level reading.
Before I give you my take on the matter, let me lay a few cards on the table. I was raised a Southern Baptist. I joined the Mormon Church during my senior year in high school and served a two-year mission in what was then the Utah, Salt Lake City North Mission. I went to BYU, got married in the Provo Temple and today have four kids, three of which still go to church with my wife.
I am also a guy whose four-year arc (between baptism and the end of my mission) was the beginning of a spiritual journey that took me into and out of the Mormon Church - at least in heart. Though it would take another 12 years to reclaim my Sundays, no religion can live up to the fairy tales this one tells, though fairy tales can produce some happy times. I don't remember any kid who ever felt happy to learn that Santa Claus is dead and the Easter Bunny is a joke.
The Book of Mormon purports to be a book of scripture, much like the Bible. It's taken from gold plates on which a thousand years of New World prophets kept a religious record of Asians - some of them scattered at the time of the Tower of Babel, some of them Israelites on the eve of the Babylonian Captivity and yet another group at about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. It's not the full story, just an abridgment commissioned by the Almighty and finished by a fifth century prophet-general named Mormon (hence the title of the book).
According to Joseph Smith, who claimed to be chosen by God to translate the book, Mormon's son, Moroni, appeared to him three years after Smith's epiphany (where called him as the first prophet since the close of the Apostolic Period). The resurrected Moroni tutored Smith for three years before delivering him the golden plates, He left strict instructions to keep them safe, secure and hidden from the world. It takes great faith to believe that Joseph Smith, hidden behind a makeshift veil, dictated the Book of Mormon to more-educated scribes, Oliver Cowdery and later Sidney Rigdon, putting into his own words what God made clear to his mind. The book earns its nickname as "the keystone of our religion" by including a prophecy, in the last chapter of Moroni's addition to the book. It promises that if a person will read the book and then pray about it, with sincerity of heart, the Holy Ghost will manifest the truth of it by the power of God.
That one promise has emboldened generations of Mormons to stand firm to their faith, in spite of arguments large and small about Joseph Smith, his 23 wives, various financial irregularities of the LDS Church, and whatever has rocked the boat - including some frankly weird pronouncements by Brigham Young, the LDS Church's historic exclusion of blacks from the priesthood, and a list of grievances petty and severe that have sent bunches of people screaming into the night.
If the Book of Mormon is true, say the Mormons, their prophet was true and so is their church - the "one true church of Jesus Christ." If the Book of Mormon is a fraud, say their opponents, Joseph Smith was a used-car salesman. That makes the Mormon Church a Rocky Mountain version of the Church of Scientology. Cue the cellos.
But why get caught up in an endless debate between propagandists? Is the Bible only worth reading if its every word is the "final, infallible word of God?" Is the Qur'an pure crap if you're a Christian or a Jew? Most of us are glad the South lost the Civil War. Does that mean the writings of Jefferson Davis should be burned?
For every rock I could toss at the LDS Church and its temple of glass, there are several I could hurl at the rest of Christendom, Judaism, Islam and the like. In fact, though many are quick to lampoon some of the stranger moments in the history of Joseph Smith and the Rocky Mountain saints - some of Mormonism's greatest burdens are the hidden ones - of trying to defend the Bible with a straight face. The Old Testament portrays God as a tough guy with a leather jacket who condones genocide, sex with the handmaid, the execution of homosexuals, and other holy actions of dubious ethical value - including Abraham's command to kill his son, Lot's toga party with his daughters, Judah's prostitution-detour with his daughter-in-law and the use of female captives as sex slaves.
Wow! And they teach that stuff in Sunday School.
The New Testament is no better. Jesus' death, at the hands of the Romans (who killed their share of Jewish messiahs), is turned into an antisemitic diatribe. Paul, whose letters make up half of the New Testament, tells women to be quiet and subject to their husbands. He also tells slaves to remain subject to their masters. The New Testament Christians open Judaism to the world by putting the focus on Jesus. Imagine updating the Law of Moses, which begins with a truth it shares with Islam - that there is no God but God - by telling the world that some guy the Romans took out was really God incarnate, and they're all going to Hell if they don't accept him as such.
Oh brother.
Religion, in my humble opinion, is a comic book taken too literally. Its heroes have been sainted. Its villains are all devils. Where most of us go to the movies, religion has inspired its own live dramas, with ecclesiastical offices, spiritual taxes and political action committees sanctioned by the divine. Imagine what would happen if people stopped seeing Batman, Spider-Man or The Fantastic Four as mere entertainment - and began basing their lives on the supplemental rules, decrees and expectations of an ecclesiastical structure based on turning these comic books into a strict guide for daily behavior.
Oh my.
If, on the other hand, we cut ourselves some slack, take five and simply enjoy these stories as stories - with ideas that either affirm our values or provoke us to update the tradition - a lot of the hassle of religion melts away. As one of my religion professors said, in response to the charge that Noah's Ark was a story of factual impossibility - who cares? The Story of the Fall does not rise (or fall) on the existence of talking snakes. Noah's Ark is the prototype of disaster stories. The story of Moses is a great epic that charms, not simply because he came down from Mt. Sinai with a couple of post-it notes from God, but because of the idea of the lowest of the low (a Hebrew slave baby) being raised by the rich and powerful (the Egyptian royal family).
For my money, The Passion of the Christ was the most violent piece of pornography ever filmed. It missed the message of Jesus as badly as Osama bin Laden got his Muhammad confused. The coolest part of the story is the Sermon on the Mount, a lecture that challenges its hearers to get away from religion-as-status and to return to the ways of the heart. I'd say the same about Islam, which has become a religious form of Marxism, giving its most radical adherents a divine admonition to blow up the world. The Qur'an has some of the coolest passages in scriptural history. It also has some of the darkest.
Which brings us to the Book of Mormon.
The story begins with Lehi, a righteous man in Jerusalem, whose heart is pricked by the preachings of pre-exile prophets. In a vision, God shows him both the corruption of his age and its inescapable destruction. Fortunately, there's a way out. Lehi can take the family and journey to a "promised land." Doing so will mean giving up everything he has - and Lehi is a man of great possessions. It will also mean "roughing it" in the desert and breaking with tradition. He follows his conscience, has to put up with whining kids, but saves his family.
Lehi's youngest son, Nephi, has similar visions, which come in handy when Dad sends his four sons back to Jerusalem to obtain "The Brass Plates of Laban" - a version of the Old Testament. This puts him in Dutch with the wife, leads to misadventures in Jerusalem but ends well when the boys come back with the plates and Zoram, Laban's servant. Zoram gains his freedom by joining the journey. As it is, Laban won't need him. He's dead. In a scene that predates Pulp Fiction by quite a stretch, Nephi cuts his head off with his own sword and steals his armor.
The journey of Lehi is one of starts and stops, with lots of opportunities to yell at the whining Laman and Lemuel, pat Nephi on the head and discuss the coming of Christ. On their second trip back to the house, Lehi's boys are sent to invite the family of a man named Ishmael, who has a daughter to match each of Nephi's sons.
Both families journey long and hard through difficult regions. There's a near meltdown when Nephi breaks his bow and the family goes hungry. Even Lehi loses it and fills the desert sky with a few choice words - which are probably floating somewhere over the Arabian peninsula. Ishmael dies. There are attempted coups involving the older boys and the sons of Ishmael. The family reaches "Bountiful" - an oasis possibly near the Gulf of Aqaba. Nephi builds a vessel of sorts, which is later sailed around the world to America.
In America, the death of Lehi brings about a civil war between those following Nephi (and his spiritual ways) and those following Laman (and his worldly ways). It's a soap opera, to be sure. The Nephites sneak off. The Lamanites give chase. As the Nephites migrate further into the New World, they encounter the Mulekites, a later group of Jews.
Living together in a land called Zarahemlah, they form an advanced society. Despite the efforts of valiant prophets - who preach of the coming of Christ - the Nephite society is always teetering on the point of decadence and destruction.
Some of the joys of the Book of Mormon are the stories, which are highly allegorical. For example, there's an account, in the voyage over, when the older boys stage another attempted coup. Nephi is bound to a beam as the older boys turn the ship around. Navigating straight into a storm, only a fear for their lives gets them to loosen their hearts and Nephi's wrists. Nephi, who was helpless to save his brothers, is now free to take the ship out of the storm and save the day. It's a story that conjures up lots of interesting and symbolic images of Jesus - from the hardened hearts to the typified crucifixion to the "hands tied," the storms, repentence and the return to peace.
Some of the joys of the Book of Mormon are the speeches. Like characters in a Quentin Tarentino movie, these folks are always making speeches. They sermonize about love, about avoiding anger, about paying your debts, about the power of faith, about the evils of infidelity and the snares of "digging a pit for your neighbor." The Book of Mormon contains lots of recurring themes, including: the exodus from evil to a "promised land," the blessings of God to those who do his will, and the power of love.
Sometimes, the Book of Mormon turns old ideas on their head. Regarding the Fall of Adam, the Book of Mormon suggests that Eve was actually the smarter of the two. She saw the necessity of mortality as a step in man's spiritual progression. The "apple" as forbidden fruit is turned into "the love of Christ" in a vision where Lehi sees the Tree of Life and speaks of its fruit as more delicious than any he has ever tasted. In a later commentary, his son, Nephi, explains that Jesus is that fruit because he's "the love of God."
Some of the Book of Mormon shamelessly copies the King James Version of the Bible. Its Jacobean English - with an overabundance of "It came to pass" - was lampooned by Mark Twain. Yet both Twain and Smith were writing stories about the human condition. Ironically, both agree that human beings tend to go south, that society corrupts the soul, which is good and clean at birth. The Nephite prophets are constantly laboring to save their nation from a devastating fall - which occurs again and again, most completely several centuries after the risen Christ visits the Nephites. The Biblical passages most copied are the words of Isaiah - relating to the destruction of a decadent Jewish nation and its return at the hands of the Messiah. Second most copied are the words of Jesus (from the words of Matthew) retold to the Nephites.
The Book of Mormon contains lots of passages picked over by Mormon apologists and their critics. Nephi writes his record in "reformed Egyptian" - which critics say never existed. Apologists claim it's just a simplified version of Egyptian script, like Demotic. The Book of Mormon contains instances of chiasmus, a fascinating style of writing that hearkens back to Hebrew texts. So do passages in Dr. Seuss. Critics laugh at the idea of a single, unified text of Isaiah, because of a theory that Isaiah was written by several writers. But if so, that's a problem not only for Mormons but for Jews and Christians alike. It's also a pattern of authorship that mirrors the style of various books in the Book of Mormon, which begin with one writer and end with another.
I could go on indefinitely, but I won't. The point is that Book of Mormon historicity is a swamp. Critics and apologists can't stay out of it, even when it means a good drowning in the process.
The Book of Mormon is not without its winceable moments. In a passage that has caused its share of consternation among Mormons, one of the early Book of Mormon prophets speaks out against the evils of polygamy - which, ironically, had a hand in the mob violence that ended the life of Joseph Smith. The Book of Mormon also reflects a view of democracy that was prevalent in its time, one that puts it on a pedestal - even when it leads to a lynch mob mentality. Despite that, the prophetic line is often a father-son linkage that mimicks the forms of monarchy.
Possibly the lowest blow in the Book of Mormon is its idea that the Lamanites (ancestors of the Native Americans) obtained a "dark and loathsome skin" because of the sins of their fathers. This "skin and sin" theory of race reflects the racism of the time. It led a number of Mormon leaders to conclude that slavery and segregation were instituted by God, to keep whites and blacks separated in the same way as the Nephites and Lamanites. Especially offensive is the idea that Lamanites, upon their conversion to Christ, began having children who were "white and fair."
Here is where my "comic book" approach to scripture comes in handy. Mormon apologists try to tone down the racism of the Book of Mormon. The late Hugh Nibley even tried to suggest it as a metaphor for spiritual darkness, not an actual change in skin tone. Critics point to passages that are too obvious to miss. Passages in the Book of Mormon, and in the teachings of LDS leaders, make Nibley's remarks come off glib and evasive. This is where Mormons stand on their testimony of the book's divine authorship while critics get ready to chuck it into the fire.
Not me.
It's human nature to attribute rules and values to a simple, symbolic, narrative. Tell a kid he can't chew gums in the pool, and you'll end up explaining that the last kid choked. That's the subtext behind half a zillion slasher films. The Old Testament is full of stories. It explains where rainbows come from, how the snake lost its legs, and why you should follow the Ten Commandments (God gave them as post-it notes to Moses). Nobody ever blasts stealing for its long-term effects. Stealing, we learn, is wrong because it's on the list that Moses brought down the mountain.
There's a danger in taking your values from a book written by dead people, especially when those dead people lived in a land far, far away. Most of us eat bacon, even though the Israelites didn't. Most of us would recoil at practices that didn't hit enough of a nerve with the audience of the Bible to merit explanation or deletion. Abraham tries to kill his son (because God tells him to). Judah sleeps with his daughter-in-law (thinking she's a prostitute). She sleeps with him because it's apparently less shameful to have sex with your father-in-law than to go without a child. Lot sleeps with his daughters - in a story designed to call Israel's hated neighbors, the Moabites and the Ammonites, a bunch of "bastards." Moses tells the Israelites to kill the men they capture in battle, but to save the women and children as slaves, to be used as they choose. There's a baby race between the wives of Jacob (the guy who cheated his brother out of his birthright). Jacob ends up getting four women pregnant - two of whom are the hired help. Homosexuals and witches are executed. God punishes David for his sins by killing his unborn child.
Those who look to the Bible - or any book of scripture - as the exclusive source of values - are setting themselves up for a walk on the wild side. The Bible says, "Spare the rod and spoil the child," but I can't remember the last time I beat my kids with a stick. God hardens Pharaoh's heart - so he can burn him - an act of dubious ethics. Most of us would wonder how God can judge a man for doing what God has forced him to do? Joseph Smith, in his attempt to save God from embarrassment, rewrites the passage in his "Inspired Translation." Paul, on the other hand, uses it to justify a doctrine of predestination that turns human beings into pinballs.
Though Joseph Smith doesn't always do a bang-up job of covering his tracks, I generally like his patch-up jobs of stupid tradition.
Having had enough experience with ideological insanity, I trust common sense and experience - the one-two punch that pulls the plug on many an ideological hatred or prejudice. As I see it, these comic books were written by people who were "not like us" in every respect. I don't share Paul's hatred for long hair, or his feelings about women. I certainly don't care a whit about what Moses thought of bacon and pork ribs.
When scripture hits you with a value that is patently offensive, the answer is not to "suck it up" and toss your humanity. It's to treat the comic book as a provocation.
The story presents an opportunity to come face to face with what you really believe. When Abraham is told, by God, to sacrifice his only son, it's a strange paradox. After all, Abraham would have condemned such behavior from others, as would later prophets in their condemnation of the worship of Molech (feeding babies to a molten god of fertility). Some see this passage as proof of Abraham's faith that God would make things right. Paul certainly thought so, even suggesting Abraham's faith that God could raise little Isaac from the dead.
Personally, I would have told God to shove that commandment where the sun doesn't shine. I have nothing but revulsion for people who do weird things - like kill their kids - in obedience to the voices in their head. If God is telling you to start drowning the little ones, it's time to go shopping for a new God. You see, I don't get my values from God. I get my values from life. Life makes clear what's good and what's bad. That which hurts others is presumably bad.
I don't live in fear of divine judgment. If there's a God up there who cares where I was last Sunday, you can tell him I'm coming. And when I get there, I want to know where HE was during the Holocaust. While I may have missed a beatitude or two, at least I didn't turn my head during the Spanish Inquisition. From my point of view, God is like a lifeguard who sits there looking on while little kids drown. You can check, but I'm pretty sure his feet are warm and dry.
So, when the Book of Mormon reflects sentiments of abject racism, what's a guy to do?
I take it in the same spirit in which I read the Bible - with its "take no prisoners" attitude toward Palestinians. I see it as a reflection of a racism. Given a choice between BEING a racist or RECOGNIZING it when it's staring me in the face, I call 'em like I see 'em. The Book of Mormon, like the Bible, engages in racism. Do I attribute this racism to the Nephites, themselves, who had reason to hate the Lamanites for trying to kill them? Or do I attribute it to Joseph Smith, whose generation still considered blacks and Indians as inferior?
In truth, neither matters as much as the fact that the Book of Mormon says what it says. The important fact is the choice I make - to see the racism and hold it away from myself as if I'd just pulled it out of the toilet. In my view of literature as, well, literature - I don't let myself get bogged down in historical issues of bogus relevance. It's not unusual for a story to shove something disgusting into our faces to produce a reaction that educates us about our true feelings. That's how I view the flaws of all scripture - including the racist rants in the Book of Mormon, rants that make up a sliver of its overall picture.
In fact, while the Book of Mormon attributes the dark skin of its Lamanites to the wickedness of their ancestors, it also condemns the Nephites for their atrocities toward the Lamanites. Such atrocities include cannibalism and the combined rape and murder of Lamanite women - not unlike the actions of the invading Japanese during the Nanking Massacre of 1937. If the Book of Mormon contains an overall theme, it's the warning against wickedness, the costs of letting society go to the dogs, and the hope of redemption.
Jesus is presented as a world messiah, who spent his post-resurrection life visiting peoples around the world. It's hard to miss the message that all people are loved by God, not just the Jews and the Europeans who would make Christianity the religion of the world's most powerful empires. Love, compassion and self-control are repeated themes. Civilization, it would seem, is always a generation away from destroying itself at any given time, a struggle that finds its model in the life of the individual - who is both "a natural man" who is "an enemy of God" but capable of doing right if "he yields to the enticings of the Holy Ghost."
One of the Book of Mormon's most powerful scenes is the slaughter of the Nephites - on a scale of millions - after they have lost the protection of God. Mown down by the Lamanites, they fill the land with a stench and horror that provokes Mormon, himself, to invoke a soul-stirring lamentation before he, himself, succumbs to his wounds.
There is also a running story, within the book of a kind of al-Quaida group known as the Gadianton Robbers. In words that perhaps didn't make any sense in previous times, the Gadianton Robbers kill in the name of God. They feel it is their duty. In fact, they murder in ways that would be familiar to folks in Baghdad today. They slip in, assassinate, and slip out - mingling with crowds, meeting in secret chambers and going to work to manipulate elections, destroy leaders and change the destinies of societies.
Ironically, the stories of the Gadianton Robbers were considered one of the Book of Mormon's shots at the Masons. Given the anti-Masonic sentiment of the time, Smith has been accused of playing to the mob, which feared that Masons were committing secret murders in their closed-to-the-public temples. But when Smith, himself, became a master Mason, and built a Masonic temple in the Mormon town of Nauvoo, it's either one of those about-faces (like polygamy) or an indication that you can read anything into the Book of Mormon that you have a mind to see there.
And there's where the Book of Mormon produces one of the greatest ironies of all. Joseph Smith reportedly translated the plates by use of a "seer stone," a kind of hokey crystal ball he would drop into his hat. All this talk of seer stones and golden plates may send skeptics howling, but again, it's a comic book. It's a story, delivered on golden plates, by a resurrected Indian angel, to a farmboy who would bring forth the truth - for the first time since the dark ages of the Great Apostasy - when the Christian Church was overtaken by Catholicism, that harlot who sits on many waters, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah.
The Book of Mormon, like all scripture, is a crystal ball, an object whose real purpose is to reveal what's in your heart. To those of good faith, the Book of Mormon contains uplifting stories with useful messages about hope, diligence, compassion and love. To those whose hearts are made of "darker" stuff, it's a compendium of weird tales with murky values - including when to cut off a guy's head and why dark people are so amazingly dark.
Those who get bogged down into the endless debate over its authenticity are missing the point. They want to send the book through a committee to determine whether it's perfect enough to tell us what to believe. But if we're smart enough to know WHICH committee to send it to, why aren't we smart enough to tell right from wrong or good from bad?
In my view of the world, it's all crystal balls and post-it notes from God, who in the end, is just a projection of ourselves. May we all learn to finally judge for ourselves. The next time a kid falls into the pool, do God a favor - and handle it till the man in sandles gets back from the snack bar. The life you save may be your own.
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