The New York Times has recently given a digital subscription to every teacher and student in America. As a result, I can finally read some of the more controversial--or blasé, depending on the day--op-eds and articles that have been behind a paywall. This morning, a number of the op-eds revolved around Christmas and worship. I read two of them, and I wanted to riff off of this one. (I recommend the one about the Zoom church meetings, too, for what it's worth.)
Peter Wehner's thoughts are interesting to me because he has stripped down just what was so revolutionary and radical about Jesus Christ during His own time. As a Mormon--a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--who doesn't really think of himself as a Christian in its modern form, there's a lot that appeals to me. First of all, I think that there's a large difference between Christ and Christianity, the former being of so much greater import than the latter that it hardly bears mentioning. Christianity is what much of the New Testament is interested in establishing; the four Gospels contain all that Jesus said during his mortal (and slightly post-mortal) ministry. It's not a lot, considering how large of an effect His life has had on the history of the world. And, as a Mormon, there are additional components to this--parts of the Doctrine and Covenants, as well as a few chapters in 3 Nephi of the Book of Mormon--that I would call "canonically Christ's". Even with the Mormonic "additional scriptures", what Jesus actually said and did is a pretty sparse account. Even the four Gospels mostly repeat each other, adding nuance, detail, flavor, or expansion in most of the stories. In short, there's not a lot that could be said accounts for Jesus' ministry among mankind. And that's what works so well about Wehner's look. He is drawing our attention to the radical ideas of love, acceptance, and seeking out those most in need of healing--the core concept of Christ's mortal ministry. There's more to what Christ did while He was here, of course. However, His divine ministry, as it were, involved the sacrifice and atonement of mankind, a singular act done by a singular Being that is not really what can be emulated by the rest of us. His mortal ministry shows us how to live; His divine ministry shows us why we live. So it seems fair to me that we spend some time focusing on Jesus' life, particularly as it's currently Christmas Eve and if I don't do at least this essay, there's no guarantee that I'll be having many spiritual experiences over the next two days of avarice and indulgence. I should say that I am definitely a Scrooge: I don't much care for the Christmas season--it's cold, it demands a huge amount for someone whose introverted nature balks at so much interaction, and the lies of the time bother me (kids may know that Jesus is the reason that we celebrate Christmas, but it's the gifts under the tree that make them excited about this time of year; also, lying about Santa Claus has not sat right with me; I remain silent on the topic every year, letting my wife carry that burden of perjury). For a long time, the fact that it lasted all month long--a type of "holimonth" instead of a "holiday"--irked me. Though it could be the COVID restrictions talking, but maybe I'm a bit past that? It certainly hasn't been as draining this year: We don't have to worry about family-, friend-, and ward parties, sledding (harder and harder to do on an ever-warming globe), watching a perpetually-growing list of "traditional" Christmas shows, and an entire miscellany of additional add-ons to the stresses of this time of year. Also, I continue to change as an individual, so my feelings likewise, perhaps, are changing. After however many years to think about it, I may have come to my conclusion about why Christmas, of all the pagan observations subsumed into Christianity's calendar, has left me cold. I think it's because people kept insisting that we should "put Christ back into Christmas". To explain that, let me talk about something else: Cathedrals. I've been to Europe only a couple of times, so I can only speak in a limited way on this, but one of my favorite things to do is to visit European cathedrals. The denomination doesn't matter to me--religiously speaking, Protestant or Catholic, I view them as spiritual cousins rather than ancestors--I just like being in them. I've been to Koln, Notre Dame (both of Paris and Bayeux), and a couple others. They're always exciting to me, letting me glimpse incredible architecture and religious iconography that is familiar-yet-different. After all of the cookie-cutter, utilitarian churches I attended throughout my life, with only a handful of similar artwork hanging on the walls of the hallways (LDS churches don't do bells, stained glass depictions, reliefs, triptychs, statues, candles, or much beyond ninety-degree angles and burlap-textured walls), seeing so much diversity in religious understanding really spoke to me. I would stand outside them and do the very thing their imposing and inspiring architecture was designed to do: Tip the head and direct the gaze heavenward. As far as the religious worship happening there--vespers and censers, kneeling and recited prayers, communion of soul and parishioner--I remained aloof. I had no problem being respectfully reverential toward those who visited the site as a religious duty or desire, but that wasn't my reason for being there. I had a different approach, one that satisfied me and my needs, albeit of a more secular or academic reason. The point of a cathedral is to help the worshippers have a spiritual experience. That's why they're made. (Yes, there were political shenanigans with the creation of many of them, but the motives of those few historical figures aren't what I'm worried about here.) Their splendor, their ingenuity, their imposition, their hope--all of these things are part of what they're designed to do. Just like it's a marvel-bordering-on-a-miracle to see a medieval cathedral rising up from the ground, it's a miracle that God has created Mankind by rising them up from the dust. From the shape of the building as a cross to commemorate the mode of Christ's death down to the materials used--to build upon a rock, rather than a sandy foundation--are all calculated to add to a person's devotion. Do some of the explanations come about through a post-hoc justification that was not part of the original intention? Surely that's so, though that matters very little. The point of the cathedral is to sweep up people in feelings of awe and reverence that can then be easily transmitted to even higher vistas of religious worship. It also acts as a tourist destination. The tragic loss of Paris' Notre Dame still hurts my heart. Seeing it in flames was one of the saddest images in my pre-2020 lifetime. But I haven't lost a part of my religious identity or my history with the loss of that cathedral. As a citizen of the world, I feel that its loss has impoverished humanity; as a worshipper of Christ, I do not feel that same loss. Other cathedrals exist, other churches, other temples. There are other ways for people to worship, but there's no other Notre Dame of Paris. I continue to mourn the loss of mosques, synagogues, monasteries, chapels, and cathedrals due to the degradation of time, the violence of wars, and neglect of parishioners. There is a rich human history in worshipping the divine that irretrievably slips from us whenever these important areas are no longer frequented, remembered, or appreciated. And sometimes, as in the case of the fire at Notre Dame, accidents rob us and our future generations of the devotion of previous generations. It isn't the slowing of worship that personally hurts me, it's the overall contribution to human society that causes my regret. However, true believers will know that it's less the stones and more the stories, less the place and more the people, less the gaudy and more the God that matters. Worship of a place is an idolatry, and loss of great places helps to remind us of that. Christmas is a cathedral. Inside of it, true believers can focus on the stories, people, and God that comprise its walls. Its outer confines, its spires and its clerestories, its flying buttresses and its apses…these are all the exteriority. You cannot see the how high the belltower goes from the pews. When you're inside the cathedral, you can appreciate much of its work, but the purpose is the worship that you can do while inside of it. Though there is some bits of religious performance, there isn't a performative nature to true worship, regardless of where you are. The cathedral is a place wherein the spiritual can happen. So, too, is Christmas an inside thing, a place where the spiritual can happen. And, like all spiritual moments, it is fundamentally and fortuitously personal: No one can be spiritual on your behalf. That's something that can better be done if in a place set aside for it. Christmas is a cathedral. Outside of it, anyone can focus on the marvels that it creates. This is where the lights, snow, red caps with white trim, and the commercialism reside. The sweeping architecture of a capitalist concoction is so stunning, so all-encompassing that it literally causes sleeplessness. This is the "secular" side of Christmas, but it is also part of the building. They are separate, yet connected. And the problem I have with "putting Christ back into Christmas" is that it strives to pull out what is only valuable within. The vespers are best suited for being spoken inside; what makes the cathedral significant to the parishioners isn't found outside. Yet it's the outside that most people see, most people interact with. There are Parisians who never bothered to step foot inside of Notre Dame; I, some random bloke from Chapelvalley Utah, have had the opportunity to walk over its medieval stones twice now. So Christmas is something that can be appreciated (or somewhat ignored…I don't know that any Parisian in the concourse of the past few centuries wasn't at least aware of Notre Dame) at whatever level. The point is, when people insist on their version of Christmas, that their internal become the external, I find myself bristling. There are very few ways that one can do Christmas wrong, but I think there are, still, a few. Those that get bent out of shape because they wish to be wished "Merry Christmas" by apathetic and overworked retail cashiers; that their coffee cups have the "correct" terminology on them; that the parties and the gifts be "correctly" observed; that the "right" meals must be cooked by unthanked and overworked mothers and wives; that the Christmas tree be visible in the White House or Rockefeller Center and bedecked with all of its glitz; that the radio station be tuned to the "Christmas station" in order to listen to the same three hours total of Christmas music that has been stale since before Thanksgiving; that there be a manger scene at their courthouse; that the kids dress up in itchy, ill-fitting clothes to parade in front of the grown-ups while a drowsy rereading of Luke chapter 2 drones beneath the children's buzzing voices; that we "take a moment to think about Jesus" before indulging in the avarice of the season…the issue here is the insistence that the cathedral be viewed from only one angle, that its purpose be monolithic. A believer can enter a cathedral without look up, without seeing the carvings of saints and apostles standing over the entrance and will walk away being fulfilled. A struggling Mormon can cross the ocean and marvel solely at the stonework. It can be a spiritual gift or a secular miracle. Christmas can be many things, but it can't be all things. Insisting that it must be will lead to disappointment, much like if you came to Notre Dame hoping to play some basketball. You've brought the wrong expectation to the right place. (If you really want to play basketball in a consecrated, holy building, just go to your local LDS chapel. We have more basketball courts than we have belfries.) This is more than a "let everyone enjoy Christmas in their own way" plea, however. I think there is active harm in the forcing the internal out or the external in. A cathedral must have both inner and outer walls. Even though it's of the same structure, there is a difference. If anything, I'm saying that the two "sides" of Christmas are fundamentally incompatible: You cannot hold up the façade of a cathedral and claim that people aren't worshipping it correctly when the worship happens on the inside. That, to me, is what happens when people grouse about a "war on Christmas" or think that secular resistance to the ubiquity of the holiday in some way prevents it from existing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that those who gnaw on the non-issue of who says "happy holidays" as opposed to "merry Christmas" have yet to walk in through the doors of the cathedral and instead are fixated on a single stone on the plinth. No, I think that an appreciation of Christmas needs to be as radical as its namesake, with that appreciation being much like salvation: A personal connection that transpires because the individual has chosen to walk inside. Merry Christmas… …and happy holidays, from both sides of the cathedral. A month or so ago, I was teaching my annual pass through John Milton's Paradise Lost. I don't have the time to teach the entire poem, so we do a highlights version that I cobbled together, spending a lot of my time helping them to understand the notoriously tricky poetry so that they can see the underlying beauty and power of the epic masterpiece. The omissions harm their understanding of the poem--that's the nature of abridgments, sadly--but I think the overall process is exciting and, for a few students anyway, worth their time and effort. One of the things that startled me this year, though, was during our conversation about Eden. In Book IV of the poem, Milton describes a place unlike any fabled paradise. Here's an example of what Eden is not: […] Not that faire field Notice how it's not "that fair field/Of Enna," nor "that Nyseian Isle", nor "where Abassin Kings their issue guard". Milton's trying to invoke the supernal superlatives of Eden, a place so magnificent that it defies all of the old tales that have likewise tried to paint a paradisiacal world. The one time that Milton concedes that maybe the Ancients' version of a utopia is in line 249-251, where he says, Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde If true, only "here" in Eden would the stories of the Hesperian fruit--the golden apples that Jason and his Argonauts sought--have any accuracy*. Milton goes through intense descriptions of what Eden is, too, citing beautiful beaches, enormous rivers, and trees overladen with ripe-and-ready fruit to eat. The animals are all peaceful and labor to entertain the two humans who live there, with even (my personal favorite) "th' unwieldy Elephant/To make them mirth us'd all his might, and wreathd/His Lithe Proboscis" (4.345-347). The place has entertainment, free and abundant and flavorful food, and no danger, fear, or worry. It is, indeed, a paradise. It is not static, either: The Garden of Eden grows and swells, with the verdure growing faster than Adam and Eve can tend to it, making their eternal task one to tame the Garden. It is for this reason that Eve looks forward to bearing children, as the additional hands will soon help to take care of the Garden. Later, Raphael (the affable angel sent by God to instruct Adam and Eve in the many areas of their ignorance) says, albeit with some conditionality, that the pair might be able to live until the […] time may come when men The concept is clear: Eden is the home of Mankind where, through the process of time, "men/With Angels may participate" and will, as it were, be wafted heavenward, made fit for the exquisite diet of the Heavenly Hosts. There is work, progress, entertainment, security, food, comfort, and companionship in the Garden of Eden. The Garden grows and changes, necessitating the efforts of the only humans in it until such time as greater numbers can tend to the place fully.
The place, frankly, sounds absolutely amazing. So you can imagine my surprise, then, when I asked the students about their feelings toward Eden and whether or not they wanted to live there, and the popular response--widely popular, if I remember correctly--was that "It would be too boring." "What?" I have to admit, I was caught flatfooted at this point. "You…you wouldn't want to live in Paradise?" "Well, what would we do?" "Watch the elephant writhe his proboscis, for one," I snapped back. "But we wouldn't grow or progress." "Yes! The Garden needs tending; you'd grow in your knowledge of husbandry." "Meh." I couldn't quite wrap my head around it, so I may be distorting some of what they wanted, but I walked away with the clear sense that they wouldn't want to live in Paradise because they wouldn't have enough things to do. (Others said they'd pass because they don't want to walk around naked all day, which I guess kind of makes sense, assuming we were dumped in there immediately, rather than having been born in the Garden and never knowing anything different.) They seemed pretty happy with the cost of this, too: In our lives we have disease, death, injustice, despair, sadness, famine, disparity, and an entire Pandora's box of woes--all of which are, apparently, preferable to the, I guess, greatest trial of all time: Being bored. I'd like to say that it's the "kids these days" who are so focused on the hedonistic pleasure of the digital age that makes them feel this way, but I'm not so certain. I've been teaching for eleven years now, and this is the first time I've seen such a commitment to, in Miltonic scholarship's parlance, postlapsarian reality. A lot of them, I feel, were operating on the Is/Ought fallacy, which would certainly explain their complacency. The thing that really gets me, though, is I know a great many of them--perhaps as much as 80-90% of the class--are Latter-day Saints, and a couple here or there are Christians. What, then, do they think heaven will be like? I mean, I know that my understanding of eschatology is pretty low, but isn't that, like, the whole point? An afterlife in which there's no disease, death, injustice, despair, sadness, famine, disparity…a paradise? Don't they want to go to heaven? "Heaven promises eternal progression**," I can hear someone saying (probably condescendingly, but that's because I'm feeling antagonized right now). Yeah. So does Milton's Paradise. The angels in Milton's heaven are some of the coolest creatures in all of literature. I'll have to talk about them some time. Becoming one of those--through an eternal process--would be amazing. Not only that, but there's a lot of other things to experience and explore inside the Garden. Once that were finished--a process that would take years, I daresay--then you could start over again. It would have grown and changed…there would always be something new to do and discover. And did I mention you're safe, fed, and free of death or disease? But, hey…there's no Netflix or even Wi-Fi. No wonder they'd rather live in this version of reality. --- * This actually kind of makes me laugh. Milton couldn't sneeze without it being a classical allusion of some sort, and he has such a soft spot in his heart that he can't fully-throatedly disavow the classics. Of all the allusions I've quoted, the one where the Ancients maybe got it right was in Ovid and it wasn't really Hesperia where the apples were, but instead Eden; Ovid, being pagan, failed to realize the Christian source of his own stories. ** I can also hear someone insisting that Adam and Eve couldn't have kids, so the whole thing is moot anyway. That point doesn't stand: I'm talking about Milton and his ideas in the poem: In it, not only is it abundantly clear that Adam and Eve aren't "living in a sin of omission" by not having children, they fully knew and understood that Eve was the vessel through which their children would come. Going against generations of theologians, Milton (and he wasn't alone in doing this) asserted that Original Sin was not one of sexual encounters. I think Milton was baffled that a married couple could be sinful by having sex. For him, there may be a bit of the concept of digestion--that consuming the fruit--was the capital-s Sin, but his primary interpretation is disobedience. It was less the act (eating) and more the violation (there's one rule to follow) that seems to fuel Milton's view. That the Book of Mormon lays out the double-bind shifts theological gears in all sorts of ways--ways that a footnote can't really tackle--and, I think for Milton at least, in a way that inherently undoes the point of the Garden of Eden. That isn't to say that Milton wasn't in favor of the Fortunate Fall interpretation: You can see some brief words to that effect coming from Eve at the end of Book XII. I believe that he'd have reservations about the Mormonic interpretation is what I'm trying to say. Today's lesson in Elders' Quorum was about reconcilement, which we treated as a matter between people. That is, how do we, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints react to offenses and mitigate the effects of when we inadvertently offend. It's a not infrequent topic, especially in a Church concerned with membership retention. Still, I ended up listening with less than half an ear as the word reconcile is one that does something different to me than, I'd guess, most people. See, back when I was a teenager, I had two musical interests: Third wave ska (with some punk thrown in for fun) and Dave Matthews Band. The two aren't particularly comparable, but hey…who can ever really justify the ways of their music tastes to men? And, in my defense, I liked the energy of the former and the technical abilities of the latter. (If you ever hear me play the guitar, you'll hear both influences heavily in the way that I approach music.) Anyway, one of the things about the Dave Matthews Band back in the nineties is that they encouraged their fans to record the live shows, to share and collect the unique versions that came out of each of their concerts, as it were. (I don't know if they still do that nowadays, as I've stopped listening to their stuff after the early aughts.) It wasn't as easy to swap that information back then as it is now. After all, high speed internet was for schools, colleges, and businesses that could afford it. I was still on a slow dial-up connection (56k baby!), so I couldn't really download those songs in any real quantity. Fortunately for me, one of the guys in my home ward was also a DMB fan, so he had a small collection of these "bootleg" songs. He burned me a CD so that I could enjoy the alternative versions. One of them, which later became the song "Bartender" on the Busted Stuff album, was called "Reconcile Our Differences"*. You can see the lyrics here, which are important for this particular post because they differ so much from the eventual "official" version of the song.** "Bartender" has some similar themes that clearly started in "Reconcile Our Differences", but since I listened to the bootleg version long before I saw the fully produced album, I often think of "Reconcile" as the superior version to "Bartender". In the song, Matthews sings about what remains of a person when life runs out. Though he drifts over a number of different possibilities, the section that always stood out to me was this part: We reconcile, our differences Matthews is a fairly irreverent person--I remember reading an interview back in '02 or thereabouts where he said he believed in God, but not that He had a plan or anything--so the particular image of a heavenly swimming pool isn't too far afield for the man. Nevertheless, I'm struck by its mundanity, especially as I consider the idea by Montesquieu: "If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides." Whatever the eternal nature of the attributes of God, there's always a contemporary insistence on how He thinks and behaves, one that shifts as time and cultures march forward. I once asked if God wears a tie; why would I not also be curious if He has a swimming pool? But it isn't the swimming pool that really gets to me: It's the whole verse. If we can reconcile our differences, could God and the devil? Today is John Milton's 410th birthday, and in honor of that--and because these types of questions push me in this direction…and because it's actually an accident I did this--I looked up the beginning of Book IV in Paradise Lost. This, you'll remember, is the moment when Satan arrives on Earth and has a deep, honest conversation with himself about what he's about to do. He asks some questions that…well, you should read it for yourself (starting on line 32). It's powerful stuff. So, instead of paying attention to my peers as they discussed not being offended when other people are jerks, I went through a close reading of Milton's masterpiece. It raises all sorts ideas in my mind, but the one that I'm always most struck by whenever I read that part is whether or not God would forgive Satan. Or, maybe, could. Both possibilities are fascinating, as I think both provide different ways of reading both Satan and God. If He would forgive Satan, I think it would be along lines like those that Satan outlines in the poem: […] is there no place In this sense, the price to get back into God's good graces are too high for Satan to countenance. God would; Satan wouldn't. This becomes less about God and more about Satan, as the metaphorical ball is in Satan's court. By the end of the Satanic soliloquy, we get this bit: "For never can true reconcilement grow/Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc'd so deep" (4.98-99).
And that's one of the saddest parts, in my mind, about what's going on with Satan in Paradise Lost. He has come to a conclusion that "all his good prov'd ill in me" (4.48) and, in the case of God's grace, "Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate,/To me alike, it deals eternal woe" (4.69-70). Regardless of God's love or hatred, Satan feels the same pierced wounds. If love feels like hatred, then how does one feel love? But what about the could part of the supposition? Could God reconcile His differences with Satan? Can He walk "on and on" with the devil, let His fallen angel Lucifer into his swimming pool? There's a bit of a double bind here, because if we argue God can't do that, then He isn't the omnipotent being He's supposed to be. Some might argue a won't that's strong enough to be a can't, though that might only be a semantic pivot. Here's some set up to the question that I ended my own exploration with during quorum meeting, and I'll admit that it comes from a uniquely Mormonic point of view: In Mormonism***, there's an understanding that before birth, all current humans had a soul residing in Heaven with God. Therefore, the human family antedates our current world. The extension of that is everyone--all of the angels, all of us, and even Christ Himself--are connected in a familial bond. Lucifer, then, is also part of the celestial family before he was evicted. In that sense, Lucifer is a spiritual sibling to everyone on Earth. And that leads to my question: Does God miss His son Lucifer? For some reason, I'd like to think that He does. --- * Despite my tepid efforts, I couldn't find a version of the song with the lyrics I've linked above. The song's tune is, as I said, on the Busted Stuff album. It's a good one, and the new lyrics in "Bartender" are also thought-provoking. I'd recommend checking it out if you like his style of music. ** At the time, Busted Stuff wasn't even produced--there was, as I seem to recall, a bit of a falling out with the band's producer that led to a bunch of the songs being scrapped--so I listened to the in-the-works music (called, alternatively, The Summer So Far and The Lillywhite Sessions), which had "Bartender" in basically its final form. *** I think there's a difference between teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Mormonism; hence my usage of the word. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Aside from a brief summer in my grandparents' basement, I have memories of growing up in two locations. Both houses were blue, and my parents still live in the second one. Nevertheless, I have memories of the first house, which I lived in, essentially, until I was about five and my younger brother was born. That little place had a living room, kitchen, carport (not a garage), a master bedroom, a bathroom, and my bedroom, which I shared with my older brother. There may have been another room in the house, but I can't remember it. I don't even know where my mom did laundry. Was that a part of the bathroom? *shrugs* Being born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints means that I was introduced (if you're feeling indulgent; indoctrinated if you're feeling feisty) to praying from before I left the womb. For Mormons, prayers are a way of communicating with God that run the gamut from unofficially rote (prayers over meals) to dictated by scripture (the sacramental prayers offered every week in any LDS chapel are identical to every other congregation the world over). While we tend to teach that we don't recite prayers, much of what we say in prayers are formulaic. This is by instruction: The format for an LDS prayer is to begin by addressing Heavenly Father (the intimate nomenclature of Mormons to God is something else worth looking at, but not here), referring to Him in the informal voice (using Thee and Thy as pronouns). The expected order is to first thank God for His blessings--acknowledging the Divine's hand in one's life. That done, requests for assistance, additional blessings, and other implorations suffice. Once completed, the pray-er closes with the phrase, "In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen." If anyone is listening to the prayer, they echo the amen. Mormonic attitudes toward posture tend toward a nonce necessity: If a woman is stuck in traffic and praying that she gets home in safety, that person isn't likely to follow the formalities of folding her arms, closing her eyes, and bowing her head. If a fellow is in their own house, kneeling down in no particular direction is also considered correct behavior. While some Mormons hold hands whilst praying--say, around the dinner table before a meal--that is more a matter of personal taste. There are even more types of prayers within Mormondom, but I won't worry about those here. Suffice to say, there is a lot to keep in mind whilst in the act of praying, if one is a member of the Church. As I mentioned before, I grew up in this environment, so praying--and the postures of prayer--are familiar to me. When I was quite young--still in the first house--I remember being encouraged to voice my own prayers, rather than repeat my mother's spoonfed version. Early on, a parent tends to ask the child to repeat after her, letting them get used to how to construct the pieces of the prayer. Eventually they move to generating their own thoughts and prayers. It was at this point that my memory kicks in. The bedroom I shared with my older brother, Jesse, had a wooden bunkbed to help conserve space. As the oldest in the family, Jess got to sleep on the top. I slept on the bottom, obviously, and I said my prayers next to my bed before slipping between the sheets. One night, as I was working through my prayers, I did as my teacher (whether it was in Primary School during Sunday meetings or my mother, I don't know) advised and tried to picture in my mind the things I was talking about in my prayer. I believe the purpose was to make it so that I wasn't simply rattling off a memorized orison before I fell asleep. The instruction was to get me to be more involved in talking with the Supreme Power of all the universe. Unfortunately for me, there is an English homophone that came into play this particular night. As I was trying to conjure up a mental image of God--a task that has only gotten harder for me as I've aged, if I'm honest--I reverted to the only understanding of the first word in my invocation that I could picture: Dear. Only I didn't know that the phrase, "Dear Heavenly Father," addressed much like a letter, was using a different type of dear than the one I imagined. I thought it meant deer. So this night, as I was trying this new idea of imagining my Heavenly Father, I (for lack of a better phrase) misspelled the first word. "Deer Heavenly Father," I intoned. Instantly, an image formed. Just the way I was supposed to! What I pictured was the moment from a movie that I had seen. In it, the agent of salvation, power, authority, and grandeur entered, bathed in a resplendent glow. The main character, in dire need, sees the entity that would save him… …I pictured Bambi's dad. This ended up being something that stuck with me for a time afterwards. I couldn't quite figure out why God was a stag. In many ways, my childish image of what God looked like was similar to a creature in Princess Mononoke. In the thirty-odd years since that night, I've often thought about how often I've tried to infer something, only to get it completely wrong. Just today, actually, my wife invited the in-laws over for dinner. They're good company, so that was fine, but I had assumed (erroneously) that Gayle needed the evening without guests because she has a lot of work she has to do and very little time in which to do it. I made the assumption and therefore hadn't recommended to her to invite her parents, which I had thought that she should do.
This has led me to wonder about all of the other areas where I've made a mistake--a crucial one, perhaps--in my imagination that I took to be indicative of reality. Though God no longer looks like a Cabella's trophy in my mind, and though I think I understand some of what a Heavenly Father might be, I'm no closer at coming to a belief about what He looks like. I do think it's important--and I'll explain why another day--but it's not crucial for me to find an answer yet. I mean, there are plenty of people, I think, who would claim that there's a connect-the-dots method for determining the answer, but those types of assertions usually don't convince me. I feel as though there's enough ambiguity and "culture-turned-doctrine" that I'm reluctant to stake any claims at all about what I might see when I relocate from the blue to the black. Today I finished listening to the New Testament. Part of me wanted to be glib and approach my thoughts on it the same way I do with other book reviews ("good, but some of the writing is repetitive, lots of run on sentences, and the middle part drags"), but since it is part of the Holy Bible and one of the most important books of scripture to not only my own religious tradition, but for billions of others, I think I might skip over anything too cheeky. I listen to one or two chapters a day as I commute to work, so it's taken a long time to get through the entire thing. As a result, I'm not fully remembering a lot of what I thought throughout the past eight or nine months, though the stories in the Gospels are still fresh. They are, of course, the foundational texts of Christianity, and though there's plenty of scholarly debate about the timing of the writings and the order and the purpose, I feel like, of all that's in the Bible--certainly of the New Testament--the Gospels are the most indispensable. That's not a particularly radical take on the whole concept, I know. I'm not really looking to turn heads, rock boats, or rustle jimmies. I think part of the reason that I'm feeling more attached to the Gospels than the rest of it is because Paul gives me a weird vibe. He has certain fixations (the one about circumcision comes to mind) that, while I understand historically, don't have much context within the epistles and even less almost two millennia after the fact. I'm not trying to be glib here: It's just strange to me that holy writ includes the profundity and simplicity of a phrase like "Jesus wept" and also a request that Paul's cloak be returned to him (2 Tim 4:13). And while apologists can make some worthwhile in-roads on the necessity of such a verse, it has a post hoc feeling to it in my mind. I definitely understand the scholarly consideration that Paul created Christianity, though, as there is a lot that Paul defines, expounds, and hypothesizes upon throughout his letters. Hearing so much from Paul makes me wonder what Peter would have said had his writings been canonized, too. The end of the New Testament--and, of course, the end of the entire Bible--is the uncovering by St. John. Revelation is a peculiar book, one written in a similar, poetical vein as Isaiah in the Old Testament, and is notoriously ambiguous. In the LDS tradition, John the Revelator encrypted (to use an anachronism to describe something that's 1,900 years old) his vision of the end of the world in archaic and symbolic language. For Mormons, this was to help preserve the text, so that, once the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ was accomplished, the saints of the latter-days would be able to decrypt it via the insights and inspirations attendant to the Restoration. There's a long-view sentiment about that idea which appeals to me: God, wanting to preserve His words, made them intelligible only with future tools. That makes sense… …but Revelation as scripture is pretty strange, I gotta be honest. Serpents, whores, virgins, the number seven, death, plague, destruction…the whole thing reads like a Michael Bay fever dream. There are some moments of lucidity, of course. It isn't all symbolism and poetry. And, like any poem, it's hard to tell where the metaphors end and the literal interpretations begin. While Doctrine and Covenants 77 attends to the Restorative decryption, there are still major swaths of the 22 chapters of Revelation that have less authoritative interpretations. That makes the book opaque, still, and I found that my attention waned often whilst driving. That being said, I liked the last chapter the most. The concept of Alpha and Omega as being indicative of the Word (Jesus) really makes me consider His primacy and sacrifice--Him being from the beginning, but also the "last" one to enter heaven, unwilling to finish His work until the last of us is saved. I also am excited about the idea of seeing His face. It's more concise, then, for me to say that I liked the last chapter because it focused so much on Jesus. That, for me, is the entire point of scriptures. What about Revelation 22:18, though? It says For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: Any of my non-Mormon Christian friends might bristle (?) to think of a chap who believes in extrabiblical scripture enjoying that part of the Bible. I get it. There's a pretty clear condemnation of anyone adding words of scripture to the Bible, and what is the Book of Mormon but another batch of words (over 268,000 of them) being added to the Bible? I'm not an apologist--and there are plenty of Mormon theologians who tackle this and similar questions--so I'm not going to go into any debate here. I think the reason I don't have cognitive dissonance with this particular part of my religion is pretty simple: If God is behind the Book of Mormon, then no man added to the words. God did. And I think it's God's prerogative to add whatever He wants, in whatever way he wants.
There's room to discuss that further, but I'm not going to dive into that here. Maybe another day. But not this day. Nor tomorrow, I suspect. Last bit: Yeah, I recommend the New Testament. If you're not religious, then it's essential reading, as it gives a massive insight into a lot of (but not all) the ways Christians and Mormons view the world. It's one of the pillars of Western Civilization, fuel for an enormous quantity of important allusions, and foundational to most of European and American history. If you are religious (Mormon or Christian), then you don't need me to tell you to read it. You should anyway. Knowing what's in the scriptures you claim you adhere to seems like a bit of a no-brainer (though the scriptures can be draining to read…and I don't know when I'm going to reread the Old Testament, which I haven't read since I was twenty). I can't say that my faith was strengthened by listening to the New Testament, but that's less about the text and more about my spiritual levels, methinks. So, yeah: Read the Bible. Of the two big religious holidays, Easter sneaks up on me every year. The biggest reason for this is because I never remember what day it's happening on. Add to that the fact that I try to avoid stores as a matter of principle, and "seasonal" sections of them as a matter of course, and it's easy to have other parts of the calendar take precedence.
Easter, of course, has a long history, a marriage of pagan festivals and Christian iconography (much like Christmas). Since the purpose of a holiday is to commemorate a holy thing, and our calendars have shifted so much since the inspiring event transpired, it doesn't really bother me that the pagan festivals are intertwined with the Christian ones. So long as there's an annual commemoration of Christ's resurrection, that's all that matters to me. In many ways, this quasi-blasé approach to specificity traces back into Mormonic roots. While members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embrace the major Christian holidays--most notably Easter and Christmas--we take what works for us and discard the rest. For example, there's a long standing tradition in Mormonism that Jesus' birth and death transpired in the same season. Thanks to James E. Talmage's seminal and influential Jesus the Christ, a lot of members believe that Jesus' birthday is 6 April 1 BC (meaning that when Jesus turned 1 it was 1 AD; see Jesus the Christ pages 96-98). Within Talmage's articulation there is an invocation of Doctrine and Covenants 20:1 that, as explicated to me by one of my Institute of Religion teachers, means that, were our calendars correctly kept since the advent of Christ, we would know that 6 April was the "actual birthday" of Christ. Yet Mormons celebrate Christmas with Christians and secularists and anyone else who participates in the year-end bacchanalia of presents, feasting, and debt-accrual. Another example of Mormonic "take what suits" approach to the holidays would be the idea that Easter is one of the rare times where we expect church attendance. In one of those delicious ironies of the calendar, the Easter of 2018 is actually one of two Sundays a year in which Mormons aren't expected to go to church. Our three-hour blocks are held every week save for two General Conferences of the Church, and two Stake Conferences of the Church--and in that latter example, church attendance is still expected, but the normal three-hour block is canceled. This isn't to say that other denominations do not see parishioners on a weekly basis. Instead, it's one of those interesting quirks of Mormonism. But that means that, in a more significant way, Easter for me this year has to be one of personal consideration. Spiritual messages abound during General Conference--I particularly enjoyed the proceedings of the General Priesthood Session last night--and though there tend to be a pivoting of attention away from Jesus in order to address other areas of concern for the speakers, on the whole I feel like there's a strong interest in commemorating the life, death, and resurrection of the Savior. It's not uncommon for Conference talks to focus on one or more aspects of Christ's Passion (though it's a phrase that's unusual for Mormons to use), and some of the most powerful talks given throughout recent history have been about that very thing. Yet as I write this, I wonder that we don't have more people focusing on Christ in our talks. I noticed this on a personal level when I was asked to serve as an Elders' Quorum president* a few years ago. At that time, the first Sunday of each month was supposed to be a message from the quorum presidency. I rotated the responsibility, having my two councilors take the first couple of months of a quarter, then stepping up myself. When I assigned the topic, however, I stressed to them that it always needed to be about Jesus Christ--His sacrifice, Atonement, life, birth, resurrection, it didn't matter. It just had to be about Jesus. And I found those were hard lessons to plan for. I've thought about this a lot, and I'm still unsatisfied with my conclusions. In the LDS Church, there are a lot of different topics. Church organization, member behaviors, specific stances on certain ideas, explanations about doctrines, and many more aspects of Mormon theology are brought up. Much like the Old Testament can sometimes seem less focused on God (especially when you get to some of the more…interesting books and chapters), yet everything in there is supposed to help you come closer to Him, so too do I see the sheer quantity of worthwhile topics as being the norm in which Mormons tend to think. That is, we're so used to the assumption that any lesson can be about Jesus because everything in the Church is about Him, we let implications, inferences, and interpretations turn us away from actually talking about Him. So maybe that's why these lessons are hard: There's a lot to talk about, and so maybe we should use some time for other things. The problem--and I do think it's a problem--is seen in Conference, too, where we have talks that range from the problem of pornography (though almost never about sexual assault and how to support survivors) and the need to serve others all the way to stories of obedience and sacrifice. Undergirding all of this, of course, is Jesus Christ. Why do we want to serve others? Because it's what Jesus would have us do. Why do we need to sacrifice? Because Jesus asks it of us. So I'm not saying that Jesus isn't there, it's that He isn't explicitly there. At least, not as much as I'd like Him to be. It's interesting: When I'm watching the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles* speak, they much more frequently invoke the Son of God. Even when their talks tend to drift a bit farther afield, the Apostles will always take a concluding paragraph to express their testimonies about Jesus Christ and their witness of Him. I really appreciate that. I don't think that Easter egg hunts and comments about Jesus Christ in church should be on the same level: Hidden among the important but ultimately less satisfying distractions of day-to-day life. He should be out in the open constantly, frequently, and emphatically. And, as a member of the Church, I have a responsibility to try to do that, too. That, at least, is what I'm thinking about this Easter Sunday. --- * If you're curious what I mean by that, check out this Wikipedia article. It explains Church organization pretty well. (I couldn't find a comparable article on the Church's official website.) Here's a thought:
Online personality tests have supplanted magazine personality tests which long ago supplanted phrenology and prognostications, then almanacs and astrology and augury and whatever other types of divination filled up the gaps of history. Despite excellent strides forward to understand the ways in which humans think, feel, and behave, there will likely always be some incomprehensible space--a parallax gap--between chaos and prediction, should-be laws and inevitable exceptions. It's in that space that these aforementioned impulses multiply. I don't see anything as inherently wrong with them, provided they're understood as a tool of varying usefulness for certain people. One of the things that I hear talked about a lot would be different types of personality--the idea of a "red personality" is so ubiquitous that, regardless of its accuracy, has crept into our lexicon. Another one that we use frequently (and has some validity in my life, I've found) is the "love languages" conceit. The short version is that each person has different ways of giving and receiving love, whether it be from physical contact, gifts, compliments, or what have you. I, for example, like gifts and support for my choices, whether they be hobbies like writing, or careers like teaching. This led me to think about what the love language of God would be. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I come with certain expectations about God. He's very New Testament in my purview, a God of love and compassion, of fatherly impulses and, dare I say, yearnings toward His children, who comprise the entirety of humanity, past, present, and future. In that superficial reading of my religion, the answer to the question of God's love language would be everything. But I find that unsatisfying, especially as the idea that literally everything humans do can't possibly please God equally. Hatred and violence--fighting amongst His children--don't seem to jive with what He's pronounced scripturally. "Okay," says my strawman, "then everything good." But I find that fraught, too, as what was good once is no longer. I don't mean this in the sort of "black is white, up is down" kind of thing, I mean in a straightforward progress from the past to the present. Even without getting into digressions about "the world", there are plenty of things that God once called good--and even necessary--isn't anymore. The one that springs to mind quickest would have to be animal sacrifices. According to my (and a lot of Christian) tradition, Christ's sacrifice in the meridian of time absolved followers from partaking in these once-good behaviors. The sweet smells of sacrifice no longer please God. His love language changed. So what does He want? There are some standard scriptural answers: "A broken heart and a contrite spirit." Excellent…but what does that mean for being a love language? What's actionable in that conceit? A lot of the answers I can think of revolve around the idea of internal improvement: Being better today than I was tomorrow; finding ways to show love toward other people ("If ye love me, keep my commandments" and "As I have loved you, love one another"); increasing the good that's in the world. These internal desires could be moving outward and thereby showing what we do "to the least of these my brethren" would be the way in which God receives love from us. That works for me, but I don't know if it's enough. My wife will accept any offering of love from me, whether it be in her preferred mode or not. God, unsurprisingly, is capable of recognizing and accepting our love however we display it, but that isn't really what I'm trying to look at. What does God prefer? Gifts of a certain type? Obedience? Taking on covenants with Him and abiding in them? Wearing white shirts on Sundays? Being generous with fast offerings? Again, I can see Him accepting all of these, but what's His preference? Where does His taste lead him? Perhaps I'm splitting hairs. Maybe the "love one another" is the way that God accepts our love (which He gave us first) and all the other things are simply all the other things: Outward manifestations of an inner commitment. As a sectarian humanist, this makes the most sense to me. Focusing on how we relate to and with other people is a part of the Mormon theology that continually draws me in. Serving others--in whatever capacity we can--seems to connect with the ideas of showing God our love. But that can be expanded outward, couldn't it? Maybe not exploiting the planet to the detriment of other species is also how we show love? (I'm not of the dominion theory of purpose of humanity on Earth; I see our responsibility is toward conservation and preservation rather than exploitation or subjugation.) Maybe not preserving systems and hierarchies that oppress and diminish? Maybe not abiding by philosophies in which others have to prove their humanity before they can be considered worthwhile or valuable enough to help and listen to? It needn't necessarily be serving qua service but a broader realignment of motivation toward the overall improvement of humankind--perhaps that's part of how we can speak God's love language. I'm confident that there are some things that God probably prefers over others (no hitting is preferred, but if the best we can do is no killing, that's progress?), but He'll take what He can get. Then again, that's more of how I was approaching the question at the beginning, and I'm not one hundred percent certain that "God will accept this" is really the same as saying "this is what God wants". And, of course, there are plenty of people who interpret God's desires and wills differently: Westboro Baptist Church is just one extreme example. (This is why, incidentally, I'm not a huge fan of moral relevancy arguments, since the idea that the WBC is "right" because "if they believe in it, it's right" cannot possibly be squared with a "love one another" commandment.) Maybe that's why it's so tricky: I can see, from my tradition, what God loves. But maybe God actually loves people facing Mecca and praying five times a day. Or maybe God actually loves those who worship Him on Saturday instead of Sunday. Or maybe…or maybe… It's interesting to think that a desire to worship God, in some ways, is a desire to understand what love language He speaks and listens in, while recognizing that, maybe it's less about what He wants and more about what we can do that really matters. I have to accept the possibility that what God wants in His love language is either far beyond what we imperfect and flawed humans can give, or it's so broad and all-encompassing that, like a parent who gushes over her four-year-old's latest spasmodic drawing, it genuinely is the thought that counts. Whenever discussing war, there's an inevitable angle that presents itself: What does God expect of people who claim to follow Him? There's a lot that can be said from any number of traditions. Islam preaches*, "whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely" (Quran 5:32). Yet it's pretty clear that many are willing to kill in the name of Allah. In the Hebraic tradition, there's a flat out commandment, the sixth**: "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13). Yet it's pretty clear that the House of Israel, as much in Old Testament times as today in Palestine, is okay with killing in the name of preserving their land. In the Christian tradition, Jesus says***, "Love one another" (John 13:34-35). Yet it's pretty clear that self-proclaimed (is there any other kind?) Christians are content with killing those whom they see as enemies--those whom they're taught to forgive. My point here is that, though I'm going to focus on the last example--due, mostly, to my own familiarity with the tradition--it's hardly a situation unique to Christians. Obviously, there are centuries of apologetics about the proper behavior of a Christian in fighting for God, with the Crusades being only one of the easiest examples, but it should be noted that early Church Fathers thought and taught about just war principles in an attempt to create something resembling guidelines to help, well, justify war. But theology is one thing: living and dying and killing in the trenches is another. And what does the priest say to the woman who comes to him and says, "You told me my son would be safe if he trusted in the Lord. Why is he blown to bits?" Or, as Siegfried Sassoon so powerfully put it in his poem "They": The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back There's an idea that, provided a person is fighting a war because of a personal belief in the rightness of the cause, his belief in God, or the patriotic inspiration he's imbibed, it absolves him of having to square the Sixth Commandment with his behavior. Based on my studies--which, admittedly, aren't all-encompassing--I don't see this in many veterans. If war was all it took for a person to believe in God, we wouldn't need war.
It also interests me when pious demand blood--insist, in fact, that killing is right in certain situations. I wasn't aware that the Sixth Commandment has an asterisk, which makes me think that maybe there's one on the thing about robbery and maybe adultery can also be justified. What if I cheat on my wife because it's my belief that tells me to? Or if my country tells me to? Is the sin on the head of the country? Can countries be damned? Perhaps the most troubling thing is when I think of Jesus saying this dichotomous saying: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). What am I to make of that? I've spoken about my problem with the Nephic example before, so arguing Machiavellian terms for God's standards doesn't really jive with me. "Maybe there's more context in the verses around it," some might say. "Surely that helps explain it." There's some: It could be read that the sword is Jesus' gospel, making people split over Christianity, over his teachings. That, at least, can fit in with Jesus telling Peter "Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matthew 26:52). It's easy to take scriptures out of context and make them say something other than intended…and I think that's the problem with people arguing that professed Christians are justified in killing. There are plenty of people who are Christians or Mormons who have killed for their country. I can't speak for them, nor for their experiences. And, so far as veterans go, I have nothing but respect for them and their choices. I don't know that I feel the same way as they, which is part of what they fought to preserve. So, however you may take this particular rumination, don't misconstrue what I'm saying as condemnatory against veterans. I'm saying only this: I don't see how people can go about killing in the name of God. Country? Honor? Duty? Defense? Yeah, sure, I can see that. But God? I just don't get it. --- * I'm aware of the fact that this is a highly contested translation and interpretation, just as I'm aware that Muslims of various stripes read it as is while others insist that there's additional context. I'm not diving into that debate here. ** I'm aware of the fact that this is a highly contested translation and interpretation, just as I'm aware that Jews of various stripes read it as is while others insist that there's additional context. I'm not diving into that debate here. *** I'm aware of the fact that this is a fairly straightforward and clear admonition, just as I'm aware that Christians of various stripes read it as exclusive to their own race, denomination, or interpretation. I'm not diving into that debate here. In the beginning of January, I posted this NPR article that highlights some of the tensions between Christian evangelicals and my own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It pointed out that there's a definitional difference between the two groups without explaining that definition. I dug around a little and found the podcast that they quoted in the article. Albert Mohler politely but pointedly argues that Mormons aren't Christian because of the ways we consider Christ, the Trinity, and modern-day revelation and prophetic guidance. None of this is particularly surprising to me, but it's always good to hear that my understanding of any situation is correct. Now, as I've said countless times, I don't think that Mormons are Christians in that historical sense; however, the fact that we worship Jesus Christ and try to follow His teachings makes me also feel comfortable claiming a type of functional Christianity for members of the Church. And I don't begrudge anyone who wants to take issue with the differences between a historical and a functional claim--indeed, there's a lot that could be said from that angle. But I'm not trying to rehash previously related arguments. Instead, I'm looking closely at what a friend posted in response to me sharing the NPR article. He and I are friends through quidditch. He's a Catholic, one who has helped field some of my questions about his faith, particularly as I try to teach it in a historical manner in my classes, so I'm interested in not misrepresenting his church's beliefs. This is what he said: It's sort of hard to be a theological friend of a group that outright rejects your core theology, labels you a "Great Apostate," and generally works to convert your faithful. I'm reminded of the phrase, "To have a friend, be one." His comment really made me think. I have grown up in the Church, being raised on stories about the founding of the Early Church, visiting historical sites, and--sadly--imbibing on the heady wines of persecution. This isn't to say that the Church hasn't been through difficult times: No, there have been deep, deadly, dangerous times in the history of the Church where we, as a collective group, suffered immense persecutions and tragic violence at the hands of others who refused to allow others to worship "how, where, or what they may" (Article of Faith 1:11). The result of listening to these stories, at least in my experience, is it made me feel that their times and trials were my times and trials.
Are Mormons persecuted? Yes, in all of the ways in which any modern religion or philosophy is: Derided by opponents, deliberately misunderstood, and treated with suspicion by others who know little--and what they know is negative. But I don't see a widespread, concentrated effort to marginalize Mormons from the public square, threatening their lives, or creating the clear and present danger of the early times in Church history. Inasmuch as the Church makes its stance known on certain issues, there is blowback, but that isn't because people hate the Church, per se. However, I don't see that any differently than a great quantity of things that people disagree with in the course of the day-to-day life in a pluralistic society. The difference between what I thought was going on--the narrative of perpetual persecution--and the reality that I see in the world around me has taken some getting used to. What frustrates me, however, is seeing the same sort of persecutions reversed: when Mormons deride those of other faiths, deliberately misunderstand a particular position (a typical Mormon's understanding of, say, atheism is a good example), or treating others (or other ideas) with suspicion. An example of this last one happened today during Elders' Quorum meeting: One of the elders explained how some Buddhism that he's studying helped him understand the world--which, I thought, was awesome--but he had to diminish what he was doing by saying, "It's weird to say that, I know, but…" and he went on to prove his point. Qualifying where we get our ideas--as if a non-approved source somehow taints the validity of the truth of the ideas--is a bad habit that I need to break myself from. I'd go so far as to say that it's one that most members of the Church need to work on. And this leads back to my friend's comment. On my mission, I felt like there was an us-versus-them mentality, where the "them" usually meant the Jehovah's Witnesses*. In retrospect, that's a problem: It led me to create definitions in their negativity; that is, I know that that is bad (whatever that is) because it's not mine and what's mine is good, so anything that isn't mine can't be, by definition, good. I know that I accidentally insulted people by the way that I spoke to them, not about my own religion, but theirs. Speaking from a position of well-intentioned ignorance, I hurt others' feelings. Being the sectarian humanist that I am, that's a painful realization: Hurting one of my human brothers or sisters is not something I'm proud of. Obviously, this goes both ways. I don't comment a lot on people's conversations on Facebook, but one of my other friends commented on the article I had shared, saying that he, as a Mormon, had been stung when Evangelical friends had called him out on his beliefs about Jesus, insisting that he worshipped a false Christ. That hurts, and not just because it's about religion. Whenever something you care about is dismissed or attacked, it is painful. I don't, however, think that because "both sides do it" that justifies this sort of behavior. I can't claim that I follow Jesus, who said, "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (Matthew 7:12), and then say, "He's a jerk, so I'm going to be a jerk." The whole issue isn't who's doing it, but what each is doing. So while I recognize that there are those who don't treat me and my beliefs with courtesy or respect, I don't see that as a license to do the same to them. There's more to consider with my friend's comment: The idea of converting the faithful. I remember a recently returned missionary back when I was getting close to serving my own mission. He had served in Spain. Upon returning home, he said that he'd had little success in terms of convert baptisms. "Why are you teaching me about Jesus?" he told me, repeating a common refrain from his experiences. "We're the ones who brought Christianity to you." That underscores the strain, though: In terms of Mormonic thought, there's a desire to want to share the message of the Restoration of Jesus' Church. Yet the people who are the most likely to listen to the message would have to be those who already think about and worship Jesus. Converting someone from nothing to Mormonism can be a lot harder than converting someone from Christianity to Mormonism. But I never thought of it the other way around. How would Mormons feel if there was a religion out there--a specific one, with clear precepts, leadership, and communities--that was actively targeting Mormons because of the way in which our doctrine feeds into this new religion's precepts? We'd probably be pretty antagonistic. And though I hope it wouldn't be the case, we could possibly even become outright hostile to others. We do this for plenty of things that we see as threats: Pornography** is the big one that comes to mind. On a more general scale, I hear a lot of warnings against "the ways of the world" without a lot of definition given. But I don't know how I would feel if, say, Islam became the big thing for Mormons to convert to, because moving from one place of perceived salvation to another is what missionary work is all about. None of this is to say that I regret trying to share something that I believe in. I feel that I made a positive impact on a lot of people whilst serving in Florida. But I don't think I looked at the broader implications of what I was trying to do. In some of the cases, the people I worked with had no religious or familial ties that made their conversion problematic. In other cases…well, there were some difficulties. The great complex mess that is life is brought home to me in this, because there aren't easy answers, especially since so much of it is tied up into truth, Truth, and how we access those things. Nevertheless, I stand by the idea that even though I have a different religion than many others, I refuse to let those religious differences separate me from my sisters and brothers in the human family. --- * Jehovah's Witnesses go around in pairs, talking people up about the Bible and Jesus, and often knock on people's doors at the least convenient times. In other words, they do the same thing that I did as a missionary. So it felt like they were copying my style, as it were. ** Mormons and pornography…phew. Well, there's a topic. Maybe for another day? I just wish that Mormons talked about consent, stopping sexual assault, and promoted body positivity with the same gusto and enthusiasm with which they pursue anti-pornography policies and topics. I'm not denying that there's a problem in porn use with Mormons: A few years ago, Utah was ranked as the #1 porn subscription state. Since the majority of Utahns are Mormons, it's likely that there is a problem with porn usage in Mormon culture. But those things I mentioned above--among many others--also deserve resources and attention. This year, I want to make a more concerted effort to write some of my thoughts about the books that I'm reading. I try to write about them as soon as I finish them, though that hasn't always been the case. As it stands right now, though I did complete my listen-through of The Bible's Cutting Room Floor by Dr. Joel M. Hoffman. Coming off of my experience with the lecture series on the Hebrew Bible, this was a good follow-up.
The Bible's Cutting Room Floor goes through a process summarizing many aspects of apocryphal writings, as well as history about Jerusalem, Josephus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dr. Hoffman, in fact, puts quite a bit of time into the nearly unbelievable story of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and recognized for what they are, which in and of itself made for an interesting read. Since a lot of these apocryphal sources come because of the Scrolls, it's also necessary context. Most of the book, however, is an explanation about the different apocalypses that weren't included in the eventual product that is the Bible. Books like The Life of Adam and Eve that picks up the thin threads of Genesis and weaves a fuller account of the characters from Paradise Lost (or our forbearers…something like that), or The Apocalypse (that is, the revelation) of Abraham, which describes the life of Abram (eventually Abraham) in a way that adds--and, in some ways--changes the way that the biblical account is read. Dr. Hoffman writes well, keeping focused on the ways in which the stories both challenge and enhance the way the Bible narrates events, and he pays attention to questions that are being answered--and not answered--through these "new" stories. That helps me to keep track of what's going on, since I don't sit down with a Bible next to me to review how the canon really goes. What really stood out to me is the way it made me feel. I mentioned (somewhere) that, because members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints aren't sola scriptura (on a couple of levels), we turn to the Pearl of Great Price for a lot of our early exploration of the Old Testament. Within the Pearl of Great Price, there's a book called the Book of Abraham. In it, there's a history and story about how and why Abraham did what he did in his life. When I got to the part in the book that's about the Apocalypse of Abraham, I was uncertain how to proceed. Would I want it to sound like Sunday School--what would that mean? What if it were different? How different did it need to be to feel 'wrong'? In other words, I couldn't decide if I wanted this Apocalypse to be a slightly-different version of what I believe is revealed scripture, or if I wanted it to be something on an entirely separate level. As it tends to happen in the world, my desires had no impact on what was actually there. The Apocalypse of Abraham dives into Abraham's past and family life, which is strikingly brief in the Christian tradition. In Genesis 11:32, Abram's father dies. In Mormon doctrine, however, there are a few verses at the beginning of the Book of Abraham that explain that Abram found it "needful for [him] to obtain another place of residence" (1:1) and a facsimile of a drawing taken from the papyrus that contained the Book of Abraham. The facsimile is of Abraham on an altar, about to be sacrificed by his father, Terah. For Mormons, this adds to the poignancy and dedication of Abraham when he has to tie his own son to an altar (because we trace our religious ancestry through the Judeo-Christian line, we believe it was Isaac, not Ishmael, who was on the altar). The Apocalypse of Abraham, however, goes into greater detail that may--or may not--harmonize with Mormonic teaching on this. In the Apocalypse of Abraham, Terah is, indeed, a pagan worshipper. But Abraham's problem with his dad is a theological one, and he slowly begins to disbelieve in the traditions of his father when he puts the idol of a god, Barisat, close to the fire. The idol burns, proving (to Abraham) that there is no power in the idol. As he's considering what that might mean, he is told by God to escape before his house burns down. In the process, Terah dies. Abraham seems to be troubled by this, because he has to come to grips with his own involvement with the death of his father, which puts a surprisingly human face on one of the most influential--you could even say legendary or mythical--people in all the history of the world. His troubles and struggles continue throughout the rest of the Apocalypse, particularly when Azazel (more normally called Satan) descends before being rebuffed by Abraham and the angel that's accompanying him. After Azazel leaves, Yahoel (the guardian angel) gives Abraham special garments that had once been set aside for Azazel. For a Mormon, there are a lot of areas of interest in this, but they don't easily click into place or square with what's already considered scripture. And that's why I was unsure how I felt as I approached this part of the book. If the point of a religion is to live by faith, then isn't any attempt to plumb the past for proofs immediately invalid, even if the proofs arrive? That is, of what use are archaeological explorations of the Fertile Crescent if we don't care if it backs up the Bible, because we're going to believe it anyway? And what's the point of studying out religious things at all if we're never to think about contradictions, changes, and interpretations? Though the book isn't about faith per se, I feel like The Bible's Cutting Room Floor gave me a chance to look again at how I perceive and believe. This is a constant process for me--probably part of the reason why, in the last year alone, I've gone through at least a half-dozen books about the Bible and the history of the world in which it was written--and this book has helped me to think more deeply about what I can consider evidence. That isn't to say that the Dead Sea Scrolls and other apocryphal writings--the stuff that ended up on the "cutting room floor", as Dr. Hoffman calls it--are necessarily evidence, necessarily false, necessarily necessary, or necessarily helpful. When questioned about the idea of the Apocrypha (long before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found), Joseph Smith said, in essence, "There's good stuff and some not so good stuff. Read it if you'd like." I don't know that I understand this stuff well enough to make a clear judgment, but this introduction to an entire other area of potential scriptural exploration has been an enjoyable and enlightening one. As far as a recommendation, I think your mileage may vary with this. The book isn't too terribly long, but it talks about a lot of things that may disagree with you, particularly if you're highly religious. I would have liked some additional interpretation--that is, qualified explanations from Dr. Hoffman's point of view--rather than near-constant synopses, but, at the same time, that was basically the purpose of the book. Read it if you'd like. |
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