Satan a la mode

The Book of Mormon was profoundly unfashionable for it's time when it comes to considerations of the devil; in the midst of a non-committal vogue, it dives headfirst into making assertions about the unknown. Follow the bracketed links to see how Joseph Smith and the Gold Plates boldly put Percy Bysshe Shelley (and his ilk!) in his place. 

There may be observed in polite society a great deal of coquetting about the Devil, especially among divines. They qualify him as the evil spirit [Mormons too (because God didn't give him body): Mosiah 4:14, Mosiah 2:37]; they consider him as synonymous with the flesh [sometimes, but mostly the Devil uses the flesh as a wicked joystick: 2 Ne. 10:24, Mosiah 16:3, Mosiah 16:5, Helaman 7:15]. They seem to wish to divest him of all personality [whatever! Satan has a personality and it's horrible: 2 Ne. 28:22, Alma 30:60, Moroni 7:12]... Hell is popularly considered as metaphorical of the torments of an evil conscience [No way, Satan's a real dude not our pained psyches: 2 Ne. 2:17, Alma 30:53, Jacob 7:18, 3 Ne. 18:15] and by no means capable of being topographically ascertained [OK, so Mormons don't know where Hell is (maybe Outer Space/Darkness) but they certainly know it's physical: 1 Ne. 14:3, 1 Ne. 15:35]. No one likes to mention the torments of the everlasting fire [um...: 2 Ne. 9:16, 2 Ne. 28:23, Jacob 3:11, Jacob 6:10, Mosiah 3:27, Mosiah 26:27, Alma 12:27] and the poisonous gnawing of the worm [try 'dragon' or 'monster', buddy!] that liveth forever and ever [2 Ne. 9:16, 2 Ne. 9:19, 2 Ne. 9:26, 2 Ne. 26:22].  (From Essay on the Devil and Devils, 1820.)

In other words, if you're doubting the literal existence of Satan, his angels/devils and Hell, YOU HAD BETTER RECONSIDER! THIS SHIT IS REAL!!

"Ouch! Ouch! Ooouch!!"

Don't doubt that this is one doubt you'll be eternally sorry you never doubted! Neither popular opinion nor careful research can save you.

Exorcisms

The first miracle of Joseph Smith's new church was an exorcism. Now not all latter-day saints know what to make of exorcisms, but it's definitely a recognized practice in the New Testament, The Book of Mormon and elsewhere.

If you've heard the story of how Joseph cast a devil out of Newel Knight, there's a good chance it sounded pretty straight forward. The LDS Church, as it just so happens, likes to present its history in a clean, easy to swallow format fit for children - even if its for adults.

I, however, suggest we look at a more complete version of this miraculous exorcism as described by Dan Vogel, who takes into account a number of witness testimonies (emphasis mine).

"... when [Joseph] Smith asked him to pray, Newel begged to be excused. Like his father, he may have considered prayer to be a private matter and found his first attempt at public prayer embarrassing and difficult. Despite Smith's encouragement, Knight insisted on delaying his vocal prayer until morning when he could go into the woods.

"The next day, Knight attempted several times to pray vocally but experienced great difficulty. He began to feel a flood of emotion: anxiety, guilt, confusion, and finally panic. By the time he returned to his house, 'his appearance was such as to alarm his wife very much.' A desperate Newel anxiously asked his wife to bring Smith to him. 'I went and found him suffering very much in his mind,' Smith recalled, 'and his body acted upon in a most strange manner. His visage and limbs [were] distorted and twisted into every possible shape and appearances, and finally he was caught up off the floor of the apartment and tossed about most fearfully.' ...

"... Knight was unable to speak during his convulsions, for Smith reports that when he took hold of Knight's hand, 'almost immediately he was able to speak.'
"... Newel earnestly requested Joseph to cast the devil out of him. In front of eight or nine people who had gathered to witness the scene, Joseph said, 'If you know that I can, it shall be done.' Then Joseph rebuked the devil, commanding it 'in the name of Jesus Christ' to depart from Newell, upon which the latter 'saw the Devil leave him and vanish from his sight.'

Newel recalls levitating at this point:

"I felt myself attracted upward and remained for some time enwrapped in contemplation insomuch that I know not what was going on in the room. By and by I felt some weight pressing upon my shoulder and the side of my head; which served to recall me to a sense of my situation, and I found that the Spirit of the Lord had actually caught me up off the floor, and that my shoulder and head were pressing against the beams."

"... When Smith is brought to trial in South Bainbridge and Colesville in July 1830, Knight testifies that Smith had cast the devil out of him, but is evasive when asked to describe what the devil looked like. ... Apparently, he was less evasive in his home town, for Joel K. Noble, who presided over the trial in Colesville, remembered that Knight 'swore in open court [that] Jo. Smith cast a devil out of him ... and said how [the] devil looked. Said devil was a body of light..."

 "So I just cast it the fuck out right then and there! Easy!"

"... others remembered that Knight gave additional details. In the earliest account of the incident, [Martin] Harris said to Abner Cole in June 1830 that the devil, whom Smith had cast out of Newel, was of 'an uncommon size.' According to a later source, Joseph Knight Sr. and Josiah Stowell testified that they had seen the devil as well. Once testified that he saw 'a devil as large as a woodchuck leave the man and run across the floor,' while the other said he saw the devil leave the possessed and 'run off like a yellow dog.' neither witness said that Knight specifically described the devil's appearance, only that he had given an approximation of its size. This was confirmed by William R. Hine, a resident of Colesville, who said that Knight's testimony before Justice Noble was that 'Smith had cast three devils out of him. ... The first was as large as a woodchuck, the second was large as a squirrel, the third about the size of a rat.' When the judge asked what became of them, 'Knight said that they went out at the chimney.'" Dan Vogel, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, pp. 496-98.

Demon woodchucks and their pals? I fucking hate them. Floating on the ceiling in ecstasy? Fucking love it. Thoughts on whether this miracle is legit? I think I'll go eat some ice cream.

Johnny Rotten's thrown overboard

John Dehlin didn't make it. His court of love has sentenced him to spiritual death. He's been amputated from the body of Christ. He's finished. An apostate. Illegitimate.

If only he had doubted his doubts harder. He succumbed to the wiles of the Devil. He became prideful. He waved his dick in God's face and got fucked. Sorry, John, but because of you so many of us now have full faith in everything again.

God is great, Jesus saves, Mary was a chosen vessel, Joseph was a chosen instrument, Tommy's got the direct connection, in the holy name of Unctuous Josh, amen!

Becoming Satan and devils

The whole War in Heaven story gave me a lot of grief. It's supposed to be so simple and straightforward: rebellion against God is bad, so choose Good instead of giving into temptation. But let's go back and look at this story a bit more closely.

How did Lucifer fall? He was full of pride, right? He wanted the glory of God all for himself, right? Where did that evil pride and ambition come from if not from God? Did Heavenly Father, the Perfect Being, produce imperfect seed? Is it Heavenly Mother's fault that Lucifer turned rotten?

No! the believing Mormon will tell you. Good and Evil predate God and births of all of his spirit children (but don't ask why we worship Heavenly Father instead of the Goodness that predates him). God became God because he was obedient to the laws of righteousness and Lucifer became the Devil because we wasn't obedient. But where did Lucifer's faulty will to obey come from? Who first tempted Lucifer, our dear brother Morning Star, to stray from the Father?

It doesn't matter! says the believing Mormon. It was all part of the Plan. Heavenly Father needed opposition in his plan. He needed a satan. Lucifer is merely filling that extremely important role of providing bad choices to avoid. Without Satan, we wouldn't have Good and Evil to choose from.

So why is Satan being punished for his rebellion against God if his rebellion and all his tempting are so incredibly vital to the whole plan? Shouldn't he at least get awarded Best Supporting Actor in this whole charade?

One last thought: if Heavenly Father's plan was to have us all choose between his Plan and Satan's alternate, evil plan, and everyone already knew that Heavenly Father's Plan ends with Satan getting his ass kicked, why did anyone, including Satan, vote for the alternate plan?

Pride! the true believer will say again. And I say, really? I thought the rebellious spirits all wanted a guaranteed return to Heavenly Father. Wouldn't they automatically realize their rebellion was pointless the second they heard Heavenly Father say "Hey, you little fucks, stop rebelling or I'll cast you into Outer Darkness FOREVER!"? Wouldn't that have been enough to change the minds of all of those spirits who were too scared of making bad decisions in the first place?

Can you see why I doubt the veracity of this story? It lacks rhyme, reason and plausibility.

Escorting Satan

Mormon lore is a funny thing. Of all the stories you hear growing up in the LDS Church, a favorite is the story of the son of a friend of a friend who despite having Down syndrome wanted to get a patriarchal blessing. The jaw-dropping part of the story is that in this special blessing it is revealed that the reason the young man even has Down syndrome is because he had personally escorted Lucifer out of Heaven at the end of the War in Heaven and the chromosomal condition he now has somehow protects him from the temptations of the Devil!

It always sounded very fishy to me, but I doubted those doubts. I'm sure someone somewhere on Earth has been protected by a mental disability to keep him or her safe from Satan. That's totally the kind of thing a generous father would do to his extremely strong and valiant (so strong and valiant they were given the task of bouncing the Devil!) spirit child. God obviously has trust issues and is a bit of a control freak. And never mind the fact that taking away someone's accountability for his or her choices goes completely contrary to the very purpose of coming to Earth in the first place.

Mr. Satan

"The biggest lie Satan can sell you is that he doesn't exist!"

I know you don't have to sit through LDS meetings to hear this frightening warning. No matter where you hear it, the point is clear: you had better not stop believing in Satan. That muthafuckahz the real thing! And he's scary as shit!

The horns are maybe more symbolic than literal, it's true, but let's just take a moment to recognize that many, many people have had visions of a Satan with horns and wings. They're tradition at this point, and Lord knows we Mormons love tradition.

And the folks who love Satan most really prefer this more traditional approach.

Now consider for just a moment how badly Satan wants you for himself.

Terrifying! Of course, Mormons know better than the Church of Satan (those satanist assholes have totally been deceived), they know he doesn't look like a goat or have horns or wings. He looks like us, for he is our spirit brother born of our Heavenly Parents. Some say he looks a bit like Barack Obama. Others think he's white.

More important than what our fallen brother looks like is what he wants. Satan wants you to suffer, brothers and sisters. He wants you to be fucking miserable for all eternity because that's exactly the kind of heartless, bodiless bastard he is (that's right, he was too rebellious to be given a body). He tempts and torments you at all times setting traps and waiting for you to fall into sin. I don't even like to think about his evil ways.

"Taste my happiness, y'all mothafuckahz! We got this!"

Good thing other people have thought about it for me. Take Bible scholars for example. These dudes have looked very carefully at the use of the Hebrew word satan (שָּׂטָן), which means "adversary", to understand where Satan comes from. As it turns out satan is a term that describes a variety of human and celestial beings who in some way create opposition for someone else. The Devil (meaning  "slanderer"), Great Lucifer the Fallen, the Father of All Lies, doesn't come onto the scene until hundreds of years later on in the tradition of satans when the Hebrew tradition was able to absorb more of the dualism from surrounding religious traditions, at which point Satan, Yahweh's mortal enemy, was born into the world. Here's a brief explanation in video form:

So where does this leave us with regards to a scary bogeyman named Satan? Do we trust Joseph Smith's tweaking of the Christian tradition or do we recognize the tradition has untenable origins and that we've been caught up in one of the longest running ghost stories on earth today?

Pay attention to how frequently our prophets, seers and revelators use the "because Satan" argument. Why should we find that argument convincing?

Stereotyping

 
The other half of "Closed-mindedness" takes the form of "stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid".

This sounds a lot like the top 5 myths that circulate when someone leaves the LDS Church.

All of the standard assumptions about why someone would leave Mormonism denigrate the doubter's character. Being easily offended shows weakness of character. Desiring to sin means you're evil, or weak when faced with temptation. Accusing someone of never having a real testimony is like calling him a tenderfoot or a faker. Calling someone lazy is just another way of calling them weak. Pinning everything on anti-Mormon arguments suggests the person who decided to listen to those arguments was being stupid and succumbing to those arguments is evidence of one's powerlessness when it comes to controlling his or her thoughts. The general approach within Mormonism tends towards belittling the doubter.

Thank goodness John Dehlin and people like him have been making extensive efforts to dispel these styrotypes.

Heavenly fatherliness #8 - Discipline

According to popular wisdom, a good father waits for privacy to administer discipline.

Does God wait for that private moment to discipline? If we are to believe the scriptures this answer is OF COURSE NOT. Your sins will be shouted from the rooftops, your punishments will be public, your shame will be for all to see. The Father of Humanity doesn't give two shits about your personal pride, dignity, or physical well being. If you don't do what he says, he'll tromp your guts no matter where you are. He's prepared a torture chamber for you if you disobey.

Even excluding his torture chamber, God's disciplinary tactics are really odd. He's extremely indiscriminate in meting out discipline. (It rains on the good and the bad, right?) If God actually dealt out punishment exclusively for wickedness and blessings exclusively for righteousness we might actually be more inclined to do good and be good people because we would all see and seek the immediate rewards God has for us. But He doesn't. Instead God loves to give everyone a hard time regardless of our behavior just to confuse us and make us mad. It almost seems evil.

When it comes to discipline, God's the Biggest Fatherly Fuckup I can think of. The Dude's a total mess. We should probably talk to him about it.

Dear God Father, 
You can take Your vengeance, scourges, and pains of Hell and shove them up Your ass. Straight up Your ass. Now if You want to be a worthwhile dad, I recommend You either develop a better disciplining strategy or lay the fuck off Your children, they're good enough at shitting all over each other and "teaching" each other lessons.
Love,
Your dear Son

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Johnny "Gone Rotten" Dehlin & Kate "Machine Gun" Kelly

Well members of the LDS Church can now officially hate John Dehlin and Kate Kelly, two horrible people advocating for the fair treatment of gays and women in the Church, because just a few days ago they were both informed via post that their heads are going to roll! That's right! Excommunication, that most glorious of loving practices!

Sorry, John and Kate, but we will not tolerate your evil liberal ways. We hope you have fun getting shit on by your family and community from here on out because you now wear the sign of the Beast on your brow. Or maybe try repenting or something. Show us how sorry you are. We love that shit!

And for all you assholes out there who actually like what John and Kate have done, REPENT YE MOTHERFUCKERS, FOR THE CHURCH OF GOD IS PISSED! You have now been given a fair warning with the examples of John and Kate that love and compassion are not enough. The same goes for you followers of brother Waterman, too! (Sister Colvin, you might be next!) Mend your ways or you might be next! (Unless you don't have enough people listening to you, in that case let all your crazy out whenever you feel like it.)

In efforts to clarify the situation the Church has released an explanation of sorts. I just have a few questions about this press release. Did John and Kate really do this to themselves or isn't it really the Church doing the excommunicating? When can we expect our leaders to clarify John and Kate's false teachings? What exactly have they said that is so horribly incongruous with LDS doctrine? And is the "door" really and truly "always open" to people who are excommunicated? I thought there was policy that getting excommunicated twice locks that door for the rest of your mortal existence. Dieter, can you help us with any of these questions and doubts? 

Truly this is God's work, I solemnly declare, in the name of Greasy J, amen.

Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner (Smith) Young - wife #9

Mary Rollins (April 9, 1818 - December 17, 1913) first met Joseph Smith in Kirtland in 1831 when she was a 12-year-old girl. He made quite an impression on her. She claimed year later that, in addition to receiving a blessing from Joseph on that first encounter, the prophet took her aside and told her that God had commanded him to take her as his first plural wife.

I can't say I believe Mary, though. Joseph testing the plural marriage waters in 1831? That seems a little premature. If we are to believe her, all I can say is HOLY SHIT! A 12-YEAR-OLD? God must have a seriously sick sense of humor.

Mary also claimed that in 1834 in Missouri Joseph was commanded to take her as a plural wife but he chickened out. She would have just turned sixteen.

The next year Mary married the non-Mormon Adam Lightner. By 1840 they were living in Nauvoo with two children: Miles Henry and Caroline (it seems). A third child, George Algernon, would soon follow.

Joseph approached Mary about plural marriage again in early 1842, this time with the whole "an angel's gonna kill me if we don't!" bit (that's right, I don't buy the angel story). This time he added more shit about how "all the Devils in hell" could never get the angel off his back and how God promised he'd be saved thanks to the practice of plural marriage and God can't lie so obviously Joseph will practice plural marriage (which he already was in fact practicing).

Mary said no amazingly enough. She even had the guts to ask if Emma knew about her, to which Joseph dodged with an "Emma thinks the world of you." She still wanted to pray about it real hard first, which she did and got the spiritual confirmation she wanted. It was a beautiful wedding. Very secretive and mysterious. Brigham performed it while Adam was out of town. She, like Joseph's other plural wives, stayed with her husband as Joseph instructed and kept a tight lip about their union. When Adam needed to move his family fifteen miles away for work, Joseph bawled his terrible tears and gnashed his terrible teeth and made sure to prophesy hard times for the Lightners. Their new home was struck by lightening and Mary became deathly ill.

Joseph was killed in June, 1844. Mary was endowed and sealed to Brigham in 1845. She never had a child with either of them. Her long life ended in Utah.

There are a lot of issues with this marriage - the proposal to a preteen, the angel threats, the devil talk, the challenge to challenge God's promise - but if we want to believe all of that we still have to go by the book, don't we? In that case, the thing is that Brigham had no right marrying Mary because she was already sealed to Joseph, who had no right marrying her either because she was not a virgin and consequently "belonged" to Adam, who fathered various children with her. Mary had no rights because she was a woman and considered property of her legal husband.

P.S. There is a possibility that Mary's third child, George Algernon, born in Nauvoo, was Joseph's.

Letter to God

Dear Cloud Pappy,

Please forgive my brother Lucifer for he knoweth not what he's doing. I know Thou art an angered because Luc made an early power grab and that's why he's now Thy arch nemesis, but we all know that Thou willeth kick his ass, no contest. Seriously, how is this even a contest? How is Thy rivalry with Thy son Lucifer (a.k.a. Morning Star) not one of the silliest rivalries in the existence of the Universe? The conflict between You is as absurd as a grown man arm wrestling a toddler. Maybe worse. A toddler might think he can win against a grown man though he will surely lose, but consider the fact that the grown man isn't even all powerful. Thou art! None can match Thee, oh Father. Luc might think he can, but we all know he can't. Stop holding his pride against him. Be the Bigger Man and forgive him of his infantile ways.

In the name of Oily Josh, amen.

Morning Star and Oily Josh offering Cloud Pappy a little entertainment.

CTR rings

LDS children who attend Primary are given a very special gift: a ring designed to help remind them to make good choices.

The acronym stands for Choose the Right. You just crimp this beauty around your young finger and you'll be shielded from from the Devil and his evil angels. Primary doesn't get much cooler than that CTR ring. And it's awesome to get something tangible from the Church that isn't a paper you colored on.

Maybe that's why LDS teens and adults can't give up the CTR ring wearing thing. They're nostalgic for the days of physical gifts in the form of a magic-feeling ring instead of the adult situation of really boring talks and lessons and refreshments you have to prepare yourself. Nothing will make you feel better than a CTR ring with (fake) diamonds. It's like the awesomeness of Primary amped up by marriage-likeness and the joy of pretending you have some serious Disney princess bling! So good!

Where thoughts come from

Mormonism, like so many other religions out there, puts a lot of emphasis on how we desperately need to control our thoughts. That's typically manifest through expressions like "guard your thoughts" and "keep your thoughts clean". This is because Satan, the fallen Star of the Morning, Lucifer the Great, the Devil himself, is always out there looking to temp and corrupt you. It's a horrifying idea that keeps a lot of us constantly on edge. Even now Satan and his minions are almost definitely chiseling away at your brain case in an attempt to infiltrate your every thought and desire. No one wants to lose his or her mind and will to the Enemy of All Righteousness, so we question our thoughts constantly, doubt our logic, second guess our impulses, and think twice before acting all because it might be coming from the wrong source.

In addition to putting up serious defense mechanisms against the Bad, Mormons are instructed to yield to the Light of Christ (our conscience) and learn to "open up to the Spirit", a.k.a. "follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost" once we have been baptized and given the gift of the Holy Ghost. It's all simple enough, right? Reject the bad, embrace the good.

Unfortunately for me, I could never quite sort out my thoughts so neatly partially because there was a little more to the story. In church I was taught time and time again that Satan had no power to know my thoughts but God knows my thoughts perfectly. I remember puzzling constantly from before I was baptized to the day I said my last prayer how the hell Satan managed to carry on such a wonderful debate with the Holy Ghost when the debate in question was all in my head. God's fine in this situation because He's got his Spirit alter ego tracking my every thought, but how could Satan have any ability to offer counter points to the inspirations of the Spirit if he has no idea what I'm thinking? How could Satan even know what the topic of debate was at all? As far as I knew the Devil & Co. were just bombarding me with everything they had at all moments hoping that something - anything! - they had to say would stick. The only way "those unhappy spirits" would have any idea that they got through to me was if I immediately did what they suggested. I can only imagine their disappointment when all they could get me to do was sneak a bowl of Blueberry Crunch instead of killing my entire family and torching the house. The Spirit must have been very strong with me!

Actually I never really felt like I was dialoguing with the Holy Ghost. Seriously, not once. I wanted to so badly. I wanted to have at least a story or two about how God inspired me to hurry home and upon arriving home I find an emergency situation that I'm able to resolve before it gets out of control. Or at least a story about finding some lost car keys! But I got nothing. There was never a Still Small Voice inspiring me to do kind things or filling me with greater light and knowledge. It was always me and the Devil fighting over stupid shit like sneaking a snack vs. waiting for dinner. That's one of the worst parts about the way Mormonism teaches resistance to evil: it almost always has something to do with "physical appetites".

In my experience the temptation Church leaders warned us about the most by far was sexual desire. Enticing your sexual pleasure was Satan's ace in the hole, and it was your job to fight off all improper thoughts of an erotic nature. Sexual acts, which rank just below murder and the denial of the Holy Ghost, were grievous enough to warrant a trip to the bishop's office for a very uncomfortable confession. Remember, guys (and gals), that "the natural man is an enemy to God!" so please don't do anything you're biologically inclined to do.

And yet other bodily impulses were not so severely monitored. Sneaking sugary cereal wasn't going to win me any points in the Celestial Kingdom, sure, but unless you're fasting you really shouldn't refrain from eating. Urinating and defecating are always okay and should be taken care of in a timely fashion. Washing up when you feel uncomfortably sweaty or dirty is encouraged and so is sleeping when you're tired. Oh, you should also clean out your nose if you have a little something up there giving you problems.

I could never sort out what was temptation, what was inspiration, what was natural me, what was brain me, and what was spiritual me, which all resulted in doubting myself ALL THE TIME.