Heavenly messengers!

 "Whoa shit, guardian spirit dude! I wasn't even gonna touch 

your golden treasure, promise!"

As Mormons, we believe that Joseph Smith got his knowledge and authority from the Highest of Authorities, yea, even the Kings of the Most High: God the Father and Jesus the Father (first just the Jesus and then the both of 'em - it doesn't matter...).

"Joseph, they're all self-righteous assholes. 

And BTW, watch your fuckin' language around us."

But let's be honest, does that seem like a sufficient trump card for when others question your authority? Not when you don't even bother telling your family and followers that God the Father has spoken to you face to face. Instead Joseph dropped other names like Nephi/Moroni (he couldn't keep them straight at first), John the Baptist, Peter, James, and John. Only after he exhausted his some of these more recognizables he dropped the Elohim bomb on a few people. After that I'm sure it was easy to throw out that you've had special visits from the likes of Moses, Elijah, Elias, Paul, and just about everyone else worth meeting from the Bible and The Book of Mormon.

 "Touch touch... touch touch touching. Sooo much touching. Never enough touching..."

The early saints eventually got tired of trying to discuss scripture with Joseph. He wasn't even pretending to pray about issues and wait for a revelation, he'd just shut people up with a "Fuck you! How would you know what Paul's trying to say in that verse anyway? Well I've fucking talked with Paul, so screw you!" It was enough to get anyone to stand down.

Hooray for made up Bible folk!

However, now that Joseph's dead and we can all get a word in, let's reflect for a moment on all these heavenly visitations Joseph claimed to have had.

Considering his direct contact with so many heavy hitters, why did it take him so long to figure out so many Gospel principles? What kinds of empty conversations was Joseph having with his heavenly messengers? Why did it take so long for polygamy to get some rules? All these visits and no clarifications that Joseph needed to ask for Emma's permission? Why did the temple endowment show up so late in the game? What's all this "line upon line, here a little there a little" business? When you're enjoying frequent visitations by all these incredibly important individuals, how can we honestly believe that they wouldn't spell things out very carefully and clearly in a short time rather than spread out Restoration through an extremely muddled communication model of prayer and trial and error?

If I listen to my heart I have to say this all sounds like total bullshit, and that is why I must doubt my doubts.

Why God requires polygamy

The LDS Church did something big. It finally opened up to discussing its lesser-known polygamist past. Congratulations, Mormons. Truly and sincerely.

But I do have a few questions:

1. What is inherently righteous, holy or godly about plural marriage? Where is the divinity in this principle?

2. Why is polygamy part of the Gospel Restoration? What does it have to do with the Fall, the Atonement and the Final Judgement? How does it fit into the salvation of humankind?

3. What good did plural marriage accomplish either for God or Joseph or any of his wives or anyone else involved in a plural marriage or the Mormon community in general or humanity at large?

From what I can tell the article offers no answers. Why not?

Celestial bodies

Here are a couple more thoughts about celestial resurrection and eternal perfection. If we get back every hair on our head, does that mean we get back every hair of our back, or our belly, or of our legs, or bikini line? Will we have super smelling powers? Will we be able to smell everyone's sweaty, hairy bodies? Will we ever have to deal with any physical discomfort again? For example, does God ever get anything in his eye? Sand? Pollen? Dust? I know he's not supposed to be vulnerable to physical danger or harm, but what's going on with his eyes? Does he have cherubim with flaming swords fighting off stray particles? Is the surface of his body somehow repellent to everything? Are celestial beings ticklish, or is that an earthly frailty?

Jesus and the infinite atonement

How does it make any sense whatsoever that because Jesus suffered for our sins and shortcomings everything will one day be restored to perfection? How does it make any sense that one event that took place thousands of years ago is making things right today? Try anticipating your great-great grandchildren's debts and having the money ready for them in their exact moment of need. Try doing something today to absolutely guarantee your house will be clean in 100 years.

You can't do it, can you? Well God did. He did it for everyone. It was easy. He just had to kill his demigod offspring.

It works that way, promise! I know you don't have any demigod children of your own, but I'm sure that sacrificing one of your regular mortal children should at least take your mind off dinner for a week or two. Just make sure to burn the fat for Jehovah.

Frances (Fanny) W. Alger (Smith?) Custer - wife #2

In 1833, at the age of sixteen, Fanny Alger found herself living with Joseph and Emma as a sort of adopted daughter. Both Joseph and Emma were extremely fond of her, but Joseph loved her as more than a daughter.

Oliver Cowdery and Emma eventually discovered that Joseph's affection for Fanny had become physical and both made their complaints. Emma kicked Fanny out and Oliver accused Joseph of having an affair. Joseph never denied the sexual nature of his relationship with Fanny and insisted that Oliver acknowledge that he (Joseph) refused to call it an affair.

The first time hurts the worst, Emma. You'll get used to it.

Despite no extant evidence, apologists tend to frame the Fanny-Joseph tryst as marriage - A MARRIAGE WITH NO KNOWN OFFICIATOR AND NO WITNESSES. Sounds legit, right? Maybe Jesus himself officiated, or King David, or maybe Solomon (biblical dudes were always visiting Joseph when he needed them.) And yet Emma wasn't so convinced it was a marriage. I wonder why? The LDS Church didn't feel like including Fanny in Joseph's family tree either.

Isn't it a bit strange that Joseph was (kind of) living polygamy in 1833 when no revelation of restoration had been introduced and wouldn't be for several more years? The sealing power wouldn't even be restored until April 1836. Joseph was way ahead of the curve on this one! A better explanation for this whole mess is that Fanny was a tool of Satan sent to tempt Joseph and destroy God's budding church, but, as will always be the case, Satan's plan failed!

Five years later Fanny married Solomon Custer, with whom she had nine children. Unlike her parents, who eventually ended up in Utah, she eventually left Mormonism and joined her local Universalist congregation.

Members of the LDS Church generally know nothing about Fanny and if they do they tend not to bring her up. We're still waiting for the Church to address Joseph's polygamy in their recent series of essays on difficult historical matters.

Here's the Feminist Mormon Housewives podcast episode about her.

The Bible - Joseph's translation

One of the absolute worst Bible translations out there today is the Joseph Smith Translation (JST), also known as the Inspired Version (IV).

Without any rigorous recourse to ancient texts in ancient languages, Joseph took to correcting the Bible and replacing the truths that had unfortunately (or by the cunning wiles of the Devil) been lost over the centuries. He remixed and deleted based on whatever (spiritual?) whim had taken him, but the real miracle of the project was how much Joseph added. He threw in entire chapters at times.

Some people have asked why we don't use this version of the Bible - myself among them. One would think that a scriptural project commanded by God to his prophet would qualify as canonical, right? God says "Hey, fix the Bible!," Joseph does it, and yet the LDS Church doesn't use it. Very weird.

Some say it's a copyright issue. The Community of Christ owns the copyright, so we can print it. Sucks, right? But just because the Community of Christ owns the copyright doesn't mean LDS Mormons can't buy it, does it? Why does the LDS Church have to own the copyright at all? This is about learning the true content of the Bible, not about which church is making money from scripture sales. Or at least it should be.

FAIR offers up another very interesting reason why we LDS saints can't adopt the JST: it "would be a stumbling block to converts." Too much newness for the new recruits. We wouldn't want to scare them off with the truth! I mean, we can believe Joseph's version is the most badass of the them all, but don't you dare tell any investigators or new converts about it until they're thoroughly convinced they're in The One True Church! It's not dishonest, it's practical.

"Holy shit, this book is awful!"

But isn't it silly that anyone should worry about this at all? The LDS version of the KJV has all sorts of JST footnotes and we even have some made up chapters published in their entirety in The Pearl of Great Price. That should be enough for any good saint. Why would anyone want the complete, unabridged version? People can be so greedy.

Anyway, what we really need is a modern translation of the JST! Something that fixes all the errors Joseph left in... But I doubt we'll get it.

Persecution

I used to wonder what the world had against Mormons and the LDS Church. Ever since Joseph Smith's first vision in 1820 persecution has hounded the Restoration. Why? Why would anyone turn a 14 year old into a pariah for having a vision? Why would anyone attack peaceful, industrious settlers? Why would a governor drive a religious group from the state? Why all the rumors about Mormon boys being born with horns? Why the accusation that Mormons aren't Christian? Why all the disinformation in the media? Why would anyone mistreat a young missionary?

Because Satan.

Remember how Satan bound young Joseph's tongue to keep him from praying? That's the kind of asshole we're dealing with. He hates the work of God. He hates the truth. He controls the hearts of man. He appeals to the minds of everyone who wants the easy way and not the straight and narrow. Satan sucks! It's his evil influence (and God's curse against Adam and Eve) (and human nature, which was designed by God) that makes people persecute the One True Church and the saints.

The problem is that we have no reason to believe persecution is even the slightest indication of God's truth under attack. We don't point to the persecution of pre-contact indigenous Americans as evidence of closeness to God. We don't look at the American institution of slavery as evidence that Blacks had the truth. We don't study the ways of the persecuted Aborigines of Australia either. We don't look at those living in slave labor-like conditions today and draw the conclusion that Satan is trying to suppress their saintly souls. We don't look at the opposition faced by other churches and faith traditions to determine their truthfulness. The very idea of using persecution as a measuring stick of truthfulness is absurd - UNLESS IT'S APPLIED TO MORMONISM.

Let me repeat that last point: in the Mormon brain, persecution is only a valid signifier of truth if applied to Mormonism (and sometimes Christianity at large).

Now please don't misunderstand me. Violence, oppression, litigation, misinformation, slander, etc. exist and can all factor in to the unjustifiably adverse treatment of other people. Willfully hurting other people because they don't accept all of your faith claims is immoral, but disagreeing with and challenging someone's faith claims is an everyday part of life and a huge part of the learning process.

Being asked to shoulder the burden of proof is not persecution. Having that proof examined is not persecution. Having that proof rejected on the basis of logic is not persecution. Having someone pointing out that your claims are highly suspicious is not persecution. Having someone speak openly about the lack of proof behind your claims is not persecution.

But it does give you a shit feeling when someone doesn't except your claims at face value. And it feels like shit when someone rejects what you consider solid proof. It especially feels awful when you've based who you are and all of your life plans on those claims. It's easy to feel attacked when everything you think about yourself and the world is based on something so many others find questionable, if not ridiculous.

I wouldn't doubt that having two teenagers show up at your door telling you your brain and life are all wrong might feel equally shitty. Some might even feel a bit persecuted. Especially if you're, say, homosexual or something.

A noble and great one

The following story is without a doubt one of the major causes of my more serious doubting. Like many of the doubts I've mentioned, this goes back to my days as a missionary.

My companion and I were working on reactivating a guy in his late 20s. The man had some serious hygiene problems but he had quite a brain. He and his father (then diseased) had converted from the Jehovah's Witnesses about a decade earlier only to both go inactive a few years later. My companion and I were thrilled to be in contact with him because (1) we didn't have many solid contacts, (2) we wanted to get more Priesthood holders into the branch, and (3) we fucking hated Jehovah's witnesses and didn't like that this guy had (supposedly) returned to them.

I had never seen the kind of enthusiasm this guy had ever before. He was all about Joseph Smith and the Restoration. He loved all the visions, all the revelations, all the visitations - everything. He wanted to hear it all. He had studied a number of the American religions that had sprung up in the early 19th Century and apparently had found Mormonism extremely convincing.

We would come to us having read sections of the Doctrine & Covenants and testifying of their truthfulness. The man was on fire with the spirit. Hungry for the Restored Gospel. Eager to share the confirmations of the spirit.

In fact, he was the most spiritually sensitive person I had ever taught by far. One day he told us about a dream he had in which his diseased father appeared to him in a dream bearing testimony of the Church. In the same dream he even heard the voice of Joseph Smith confirming that he would once again be with his father in the Celestial Kingdom.

It was amazing! Visions! The voice of the Prophet! I was so excited for him, not to mention jealous! Holy shit, it's all real! Our guy is living it the way it was meant to be! My companion and I were sure he was going to be leading the local church within a decade. Shit, this dude was going to be an area authority by the time he was 45! He was going to lead the church in that country with the power of the Spirit unlike anyone before him! Every meeting with him was magical. Our meetings with him always ended on a high note.

We loved this guy and loved what he was going to do for the Church, so when he called us in desperation one day asking for some financial help we were ready to assist. We weren't too thrilled that he had asked us for money, though he had promised to pay us back the next week, but my companion and I talked it over and prayed about it and eventually came up with $120 that we compassionately handed over.

As you likely suspect, we didn't hear from him for a long time, and when we did hear from him a month later he was telling us that he had up and gone to the UK for some English course. We knew he had scammed us and we knew he was lying to us. We knew that he had always been lying to us about everything. That for whatever reason he had been trying to wrangle as many copies of the Doctrine & Covenants from us as possible. Then he wanted our money.

We could have killed him, but we kept that to ourselves. Once we finally managed to convince him to meet us again we called him out on his bluff. He, of course, got upset and a shouting match ensued, after which he stormed out of the church. Our problems with him continued for a time. At one point he threatened to call the police on us because we still had the Discman he had left in the church the day we had our big fight. It wasn't a pretty scenario.

The most troubling thing about the whole situation was that my companion and I had felt the Spirit the strongest we had ever felt it before while listening to this guy's stories. Considering the fact that he had made everything up, what was it that we had felt? Why had God allow us, his humble and dedicated servants to be so badly conned? What did this whole experience mean with regards to the other experiences I had with the confirmations of the Spirit? And what did it mean with regards to God's personal investment in our work (his work)?

It's not that I had never doubted the power of the Spirit to communicate before, but now things had somehow become much more serious and real. Could I trust God? Was the Spirit a load of bullshit,  nothing more than happy feelings of confirmation bias?

Book of Mormon - the three Nephites

Though I believed in them, it did not escape my mind how silly it was to believe that there were three immortal Nephite apostles roaming the earth in efforts to prepare the gathering of Israel.

What was even sillier were all the stories circulating throughout the Church about encounters with these nearly 2000-year-old men.

How can you not doubt this kind of thing? How can you read this in a non-fiction book and not feel some kind of cognitive dissonance? How long can you maintain faith in the idea of three stealthy fellows moving around the globe preaching the good word for centuries on end? One would think that if they were imparting the Gospel of Jesus all over the place there might actually have been a few attempts at restorations of the Primitive Church before 1830? There would at least be some kind of series of journals out there somewhere where people in different parts of the world wrote about some kind of conversion to something that looks a hell of a lot like Mormonism, right?

The Primitive Church

Mormons are so proud to claim they have the same church that Jesus started way back in the day. I was told my whole life that God had restored his church through Joseph Smith so that everything was accounted for - all the ordinances, all the teachings, all the offices, all the miracles. We Mormons had the whole package and everyone else was just clutching at straws.

But it didn't take much observation to realize we had kind of fucked with things a bit. For starters, where did the two counselors in the First Presidency come from? That shit ain't biblical. And what happened to the prophetesses? I think I read about a prophetess or two in the Bible.

So hang on. Do our church people do what the biblical people did? It's easy enough to look up what these Primitive Church people were likely all about.

Deacon/deaconess - a servant, helper, underling
Teacher - a title for Jesus
Priest - Old Testament office
Elder - a bishop
High priest - the head priest in a group of priests
Bishop - Jesus and later the elders
Counselor - a legal, political position
Stake President - NA
High Councilman - NA
Area Authority - NA
Seventy (Evangelist) - anyone sharing the Gospel
Apostle - a delegate, i.e. a missionary
Prophet - so Old Testament
Prophetess - an inspired poetic woman

This doesn't really sound anything like Mormonism, it sounds kind of old and out of date. Are we sure we're the same church that Jesus established? I'm kind of having some doubts.