Book of Mormon - Christ the Father

Remember how the Book of Mormon is so great because it clarifies the Gospel so well, eliminating all confusion and room for debate? Mormons are so lucky to have it! Thanks to its inspired writings we don't have to worry about how that whole Godhead thing works because WE KNOW that God the Father is the big boss daddy god, Jesus is his literal son and perfect soul clone, and the Holy Ghost is... something... without a body... who's... out there... somewhere... inspiring, teaching, and comforting people! We love the Holy Ghost!

Anyway, the Book of Mormon has such powerfully clear explanations of who Christ is, like when Abinadai teaches that the Messiah, meaning the "Anointed One" (usually referred to with the Anglicized version of the Greek word "Χριστός" (Khristós) "Christ") is "the Father... and the Son" (Mosiah 15:3). With scripture like that it's only obvious that the God and Jesus are two different people. But if that's not clear enough, perhaps you should hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Nothing makes the nature of the Godhead more clear than when Jesus himself explains it to the brother of Jared: "I am the Father and the Son" (Ether 3:14). It's so obvious they're totally different people!

And it's not like anyone's gone back to mess with Joseph's excellent translation to correct any confusing Godhead talk, right? Sure, adding "son of" to verses like 1 Nephi 11:18, 1 Ne. 11:21, 1 Ne. 11:32, or 1 Ne. 13:40 might seem like whoever wrote the Book of Mormon wasn't exactly clear on who was Who, and maybe you might be tempted to point out that the original version of Alma 5:48 said that Jesus was begotten of himself, but that's really splitting hairs! Anyone who fails to understand the clarity of the Book of Mormon must not be reading with the Spirit.

Even if there were changes made later on in an effort to rewrite the relationship between God and Jesus, why should that cause anyone to doubt the scriptures? It's not like Joseph Smith was a Methodist-influence trinitarian in his early days of leading the Church only to change his mind years later! He had seen God the Father and Jesus Christ in the Grove what back in 1820, remember? No one needed to tell him God and Jesus were separate!

And yet when I read Mosiah 15 and Ether 3 I can't help but wonder if there's a little more going on beneath the surface. Oh, whatever! I'm sure those prophets just meant that Jesus is our adoptive father after we're baptized, that's all. Doubt not, dear Mormons, and press forward with faith!

Skepticism

Dieter, I know you would like everyone to be the nothing-doubting type, but there are some good reasons why many of us find greater security in doubt than in faith in certainty. Please sit back and let Mr. Deity & Co. try to show you where we're coming from.

I know you might not like this a whole lot. You're probably wondering what happens when this guy is made to stand before The Judge. Let's tap the power of the Deity to see how that might play out.

So we're cool now, right?
Good.

Prayer vs. action

I had a companion on my mission who loved to tell people to "pray like everything depends on God, but work like everything depends on you!" It's the whole "God helps those who help themselves" thing. I think it's supposed to be motivating, but every time I heard it it just got me thinking that maybe the first part about praying was a waste of time. Could it possibly be that we would get the same results if we just worked really hard without wearing out our knees and soaking our pillows in tears nightly?

Chastity - better off dead

When I ran across Heber Grant's comment about "losing" your chastity in the Church manual Gospel Principles I nearly threw up. I read it again hoping I had misunderstood. I read it again because I couldn't believe the words. And again because it still wasn't sinking in. I couldn't imagine any loving parent of any faith tradition believing this kind of bullshit:

"There is no true Latter-day Saint who would not rather bury a son or a daughter than to have him or her lose his or her chastity – realizing that chastity is of more value than anything else in all the world.”

Words of a prophet, people. A modern-day one. This is the kind of enlightenment God has graced his latter-day saints with. Not only should your child be slut shamed, but you as a parent should wish they had died.

Today if you pick up a copy of Gospel Doctrines you won't find this quote (it was removed for the 2006 English edition, if I'm not mistaken), but the this comment and others like it have been spoken, printed, and spread around the Church for decades. I cannot imagine the kind of damage this has caused both parents and children.

I hated this concept. Guilty of sexual indiscretion? You'd be better off dead. Raped? You'd be better off dead. Who says so? The prophets of God. Who cares? Your parents, your siblings, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, your cousins, your friends, your friends' parents, your bishop, your youth leaders, and anyone else who is truly Mormon.

   
The only way I managed to put this one on my shelf was by reminding me that most everyone I cared about probably didn't believe this and they seemed like decent Mormons to me. This was just an old idea, outdated now that we better understand Christ's loving atonement, right?

The universal gospel

 
It was not an easy thing to admit, but I eventually came to realize that there are people the Church and the Gospel cannot “help.” Why? Because some people are entirely incapable of understanding, let alone conforming to, the logic and lifestyle of Mormonism. Or maybe they do understand it but it strikes them as absolutely ridiculous.

This doesn't sit well with Mormons because we've been taught that "the Gospel is simple" and logical and that "the Church is for everyone." I can't tell you how many people I met on my mission who just couldn't put everything in place. Mormonism just wouldn't click for them. Then there were those people who I knew could never fully function with a dominantly Mormon world view. Their lives, their thoughts, their concerns, their raisons d'etre won't fit.

Could it be that Mormonism wasn't as universal as I believed? How much did I owe my understanding to decades of training and conditioning? Even then, how much sense did Mormonism make to me?

I was sure I had it all figured out and all the pieces put together. Except for those ever so small, ever so occasional doubts - the one's I knew I had to doubt. 

Miracles - out miracled

 It's hard not to wonder where God is in your life when everyone else seems to have really awesome miracle stories and your church's just kind of suck. I met a man once who had a dream of two skyscrapers covered in fireballs a mere two days before 9/11. Admittedly the guy didn't know what the dream "meant", but why the hell didn't our true prophet Gordon have that dream so one of his sidekicks could interpret it? Then there was a guy who saw God and got his symbol (apparently a phoenix or a peacock) tattooed on his back. Not even our highest priests hanging out in the Holies of Holies discussing who doesn't get the Priesthood next dare say they saw something as miniscule as the imprint in the carpet from Jesus' feet. Buddhists have found Buddha's permanently impressed in rocks!

We've got nothing. We have lost car keys showing up. We have avoided accidents. We manage to find our soul mates from the Pre-Existence. We like to think we get weather on demand. We get well-blessed food. We maybe have really weird old women bearing testimony about feeling the presence of a ghost in the temple. We don't have many healings. It's all pretty meh.

God, at least send us some seagulls to save save our picnics from ants and yellow jackets. We're just not impressing anyone these days.

Miracles - the "fruits" of other religions

One thing about asking people outside of Mormonism about their spiritual experiences is that you end up hearing about a lot of spiritual experiences that can't take credit for and can't incorporate. I ran into this frequently on my mission. I would try to establish an understanding of someone's spirituality only to find they had stories of blessings and miracles and visions and visitations and practices that I would then have to work with in my attempt to explain how the more Mormon-like parts were integral to the Mormon god's plan for them and how the crazy parts (read "non-Mormon-like) were maybe less significant than they thought. That's what you do, right? You find the common ground and build on it.

"She totally would have died had we not been there... and had she not received medical treatment."

My doubts came about because I knew my approach wasn't honest. I wasn't letting these people own their personal, family, and faith tradition's miracles they way I expected them to believe and respect mine. Was what I was doing ethical? It felt more manipulative than anything.

"I should be dead right now, but I was protected!"

Another doubt soon followed. Why were all of the miracles and answers to prayers I was hearing about so familiar to things like the First Vision story, any number of personal conversion stories, and Mormon healing stories? Why weren't they experiencing stupors of thought instead of enlightenment? Why were they being healed through priestcraft instead of the Priesthood? Why were they seeing heavenly beings when they weren't even praying to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ? How were they getting clear messages from beyond the veil that were leading them to incredibly un-Mormon-like beliefs?

"He came from beyond and spoke to me..."

It was as though they were working from the same narrative template as we Mormons, but only to confirm the efficacy of non-Mormon beliefs. Could we all - Mormons and non-Mormons alike - be making this crap up? Are we all delusional? Are we all simply finding ways to confirm what we want to believe? I had to wonder. Were my stories any more credible or convincing than theirs?

"My guy has powers. You gotta check him out!"

Things only got weirder when people would pray about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, receive an answer that it was true only to incorporate Joe and his book as part of their belief system instead of abandoning their incomplete knowledge and embracing Mormonism fully. What do you do when they pull the rug out from under you by ignoring what the answer to a prayer about the Book of Mormon is supposed to mean?