Is the Church true?

Every Sunday, I greet my former Bishop and very good friend with the statement, "Well, Bishop, is the Church still true?"  His normal response is, "What does that word mean?"  We laugh. 

His wife has been struggling for some seven years about whether the truth claims and hagiography around the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are valid.  She's researched all sorts of evidence that there are challenges with these claims, and she views that the Church tends to whitewash its leaders and history in the most positive of light.  She especially struggles over Joseph Smith's hidden polygamy and polyandry as being inconsistent with the role model we paint as what a Prophet should be.  Having been through all that, I certainly know where she is coming from.

Over dinner with my wife and her husband, she asked me, "Can you say that the Church is the only true church on the face of the earth?"  I simply answered, "Yes, it is for me."  This, from a wayfaring fool who believes none of the truth claims as being literally the case.

The "Mormon Apologists", or "mopologists" claim my Middle Way is incoherent nonsense.  Do they have a point?  Is it possible to have the Church be "true for me" when I don't believe in its historical truth claims?

I think what drives me to declare that the Church is "True for me" is the way many insist that since some of these truth claims are not valid, it must be "not true".  One ex-mormon thinks my Middle Way is "intellectually dishonest", because I fail to reject the whole because some of the parts are not valid.  Another non-mormon observed:

"The church is obviously not true because it's pretty obvious Joseph Smith just made things up, it's not at all clear that any of his more substantive claims, such as to have had hands laid upon him by resurrected or "translated" beings to confer authority on him from the Creator of the Universe, involve actual occurrences or are in fact later inventions designed to bolster his influence over his followers. Supposedly ancient scripture allegedly translated by Joseph Smith appears to have been of modern invention, etc."

 

This triggered something inside of me. 

 

It didn't trigger "doubt" -- I don't doubt the claims, for I have set aside belief entirely.  An empirical claim is either true, not true, or unproven, and doubt doesn't have a lot to do with it.  True claims I accept.  False claims I reject, and the Middle Way between them -- the area of the unproven, I suspend both belief and disbelief and hold such things in "Faith". 

 

No, I think it triggered "loyalty".  I think I objected to the buying-in of the "all or nothing" proposition -- it's either "all true" or "all fraud", and such absolutes don't work for me anymore.  My response was as follows:

I really have a serious issue with the proclamation, "It's obvious the church isn't true".

What does it mean for a 'church' to be 'true' or 'not true'?   I could look at a photograph, and say, is that photograph a true and accurate representation of the subject, and perhaps it is or perhaps it isn't. If I make a claim and say that the photograph is a picture of bob, when it really is a picture of 'fred', then we might be justified in saying 'it is not true'.

But the church is not a photograph. It is meant to point to something, and that something is 'Christ'. Does the church accurately point to Christ? Can I come closer to Christ by reading the Church's scripture (the book of mormon, etc.)? Is my daily life closer to Christ when I live in harmony with what the Church teaches?

Something within us all points to Christ. Something within Joseph Smith pointed very well to Christ. And that something, which I choose to call God, revealed to Joseph a powerful scripture that leads people to Christ by speaking to that spark of Christ within us all. We can choose to look at Joseph Smith's methods for getting that divine spark across.  We can pretend that he translated some ancient records and swear on our testimonies that he did. But any literal claim or lack thereof doesn't change whether or not the product of his prophetic experience points to Christ or not.

And the proof of that claim is entirely in the person experience one has. We have a word for that personal experience: "Testimony".

To say, "The Church is true for me," is to declare that it is mine.  I may not like everything it does -- it is full of people with whom I may agree or disagree.  Sometimes, I profoundly disagree.  But in the end, this is my tribe, my culture, and my Church.

This doesn't mean a blanket acceptance of harmful falsehoods.  Sterling McMurrin said in an interview in Dialogue, "I really have a genuine love for the Church and a concern for its well being."  He often stood in opposition to orthodoxy that didn't make sense, and was counted as a true "heretic".  I think his example is very critical.

To love the Church is to stand tactfully against those things it does to harm its members and others.  I struggled mightily with the Church's position on Proposition 8, as I did with its position on blacks and the priesthood on my mission.  On my mission, I caved and taught the principle of exclusion from the priesthood.  Proposition 8 had me distancing myself from the Church.  I find neither of these approaches satisfactory.  To be concerned with the welfare of the Church is to remain engaged and find the way to mend the harm done by the institution when it does harm.  This is the Middle Way of appropriate activism: to remain faithfully engaged in helping the church not do harm to itself.

Because the Church is mine, I bear responsibility for its actions, even and especially when I don't agree.  This is what it means to me to "sustain" its leaders.  I have no illusions that I can change any aspect of the Church.  The leadership is somewhat autocratic, and my voice is nothing.  But I can be very engaged.  I can and must stand in opposition, as I do, to those "mopologist" voices whose supposed defense of the Church does far more harm than good.  I will continue to oppose the blurring of boundaries between Church and State.  But these efforts often bring me down, emotionally, and do not bring out the best in me.

Where I think the Church matters the most is in the individual service we render.  I can sit, one on one, with those who struggle with faith, and find the way to lift them while lifting my own soul as well.  Here is where the church is truest to me -- in the quiet, loving service we render in support to another human being.

 

My responses to an apologist

You probably know by now that I don't think much of apologetics.  I had some conflicts with a noted LDS apologist last month, for which I regret some of my reaction to his antics.  I lowered myself to his level, and that's a bit embarrassing. So I need to leave these things aside. I apologized on webpages I can no longer access, he refused to acknowledge it, so that is life.

Yet this apologist continues to blog about me -- I think it must be a bit of an obsession for him to have someone who tries to live a faithful Middle Way -- it does not compute in his worldview. Here is his post:

I ran across [sic] the following pseudonymous comment on a Mormon-focused message board dominated by formerly active members of the Church who are now atheists and agnostics. It comes from an outspokenly atheist former Mormon — an exceptionally bright one, though one who is seldom fair in his remarks — and is addressed (sincerely, I think) to another pseudonymous poster who had been wondering, given her own unbelief (I’m simplifying here; her position is somewhat obscure and perhaps incoherent), whether she still belongs in a church in which nasty people like me insist so firmly on the literal deity of Christ, his physical resurrection from the dead, and the literality of Joseph Smith’s First Vision and of the visits from Moroni. I’ve corrected the punctuation very slightly:

The Church just got rid of its official apologetics outlet and turned it into a Mormon Studies outlet. Mormon studies allows anything, from creative apologetics to existentialism and atheism, and is a huge win for people like you. They [Mormon apologists, specifically including me] know this, blog quite openly about it, and now have even more reason to make you the enemy, so why are you so disheartened? Today is the day for you, my friend. The field is ripe.

Worthy of reflection, I think, even though the Church, as such, played no role whatever in the recent purge.

I responded as follows:

In doing a little research on your post here, I believe I am the "pseudonymous poster..." you refer to above.

I love the Gospel of John. In it, a well-educated, rational Jew named Nicodemus interprets Christ's words literally that we must be born again. He asks, "How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?" After which Jesus explains that there is a difference between heavenly things and earthly things, and that spiritual things are equally real even if not physically so. That's why Jesus taught in parables -- the truth is the normative value of the story, not the physical literalism thereof. ."

Nicodemus continued to be caught in a literalist mindset, so Jesus asks, "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?"."

I have stated that it is possible to be a fully faithful member of the Church in good standing and not have a literal belief in certain claims. Faith is distinct from belief, in that faith recognizes explicitly the difference between knowing something, and hoping for and acting on something while not knowing it is true. Belief is passive, faith is active. Belief does not recognize the difference between knowing and not knowing, but simply claims to know. Belief does not distinguish whether something is true or not: faith in something not true, by Alma's definition is not faith at all. ."

To recognize that someone can have faith in something without knowing it is true seems to be entirely consistent with Alma 32's definition of faith. This is and has been my position. I hold this position because by not anchoring on the literal, my faith can withstanding the knowledge, for example, that the Book of Abraham was not a translation of the Papyrus as Joseph Smith claimed, or that the Book of Mormon is not a literal history of the native americans as a whole as prophets have claimed up until recently. ."

To be specific, I do not know that Jesus physically resurrected from the dead -- I neither believe it nor disbelieve it -- there is no *reason* to believe it -- meaning that it defies logical proof ("reason") -- yet I know through personal experience and testimony that He lives. How is an honest self-appraisal of the lack of valid empirical evidence for something an obscure or incoherent position? Yet you and others "insist so firmly on the literal", implying that those who are honest and sincere about their lack of knowledge are somehow lesser Mormons than you. Your colleagues have gone so far as to call those who don't believe 'anti-christs', and having asked you to repudiate this, you have firmly stood behind it.."

I consider you, Dr. Peterson, a master of Mormon Israel. How is it that you do not know these things?

I am not surprised, but my response did not survive his moderation. His terms of "dialog" are always to do so in a safe environment where he can have his say without thoughtful response...

At the same time as I posted -- knowing he was responding to other comments, I noted that this apologist saw "Les Miserables", being grateful that it promotes "religious faith".  I responded as follows:

Like you, I find the message of Les Miserables sublime and clearly faith promoting.  I'm not sure I would agree that such faith is 'religious' per se.  The message of forgiveness, of redemption, and of walking the right path is clearly in common among many religious and non-religious.

To me, the lesson of Javert is an extraordinarily important one.  Javert represented the best of righteousness and justice - his integrity was impeccable.  Yet, Javert could not accept that there was another way to be acceptable to god other than through the exactness of obedience: Justice must be served.  He could not accept that Jean Valjean was a redeemed person, that although they may have believed differently with respect to the law and justice, that both were indeed good and righteous people.

This is the beauty and irony of Javert: perfect goodness can also be perfectly evil.

We find in the Church today many who believe in a very specific and rigid definition of mormonism.  They claim that anyone who believes differently, particularly those who have a non-literal belief, to be "anti-christ", citing specifc scriptures out of context.  These are the "Javerts" of the church -- their testimony is strong, their righteousness is unquestionable, their integrity the highest of all -- yet because they fail to understand the real principle behind "atonement" -- that is, "If ye are not one ye are not mine" -- they lose track of the "more excellent way" of Godly love.

"Take my hand, and lead me to salvation,
Take my love, for love is everlasting,
And remember the truth that once was spoken:
To love another person is to see the face of God."

It is my hope and prayer that in this new year, we can lay aside the conflicts of the past and embrace one another in full fellowship.  That, to me, is to love another person.  That, to me, is what Jesus asks us when he says, "I say unto you 'be one', and if ye are not one, ye are not mine."  That, to me, is to see the face of god as we welcome diversity of spiritual gifts without judgment and exclusion.

Can we walk this Way together?

I'm not sure this will have any effect. I doubt it will survive his moderation. But it truly is my hope that such 'defense of mormonism' that causes such antipathy be done away.

And in another post, this same blogger quotes Bertrand Russell out of context claiming that the atheist worldview provides no comfort to mourners. He fails to recognize the purpose of Russell's charge to focus on the present rather than on a powerful god that is supposed to make things right, because in Russell's view, the universe doesn't seem to care in the least about humans. Instead, he charges us to make the most of today -- a very different message than the caricature of Russell's beliefs by quoting Russell out of context. Here is what I wrote:

By quoting Bertrand Russell out of context, it certainly paints a bleak picture. But the title of the article is "A Free Man's Worship", and while he certainly paints a bleak picture of death, his purpose is to enhance the free man's ability to make the most of the present -- to establish morality and goodness amidst what he views as the cruelty of the omnipotent universe. This is what Russell's point was:

"Let us learn, then, that energy of faith which enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good; and let us descend, in action, into the world of fact, with that vision always before us."

I would hardly think this charge to have faith in a way that leads to action for good is a message at odds with what we as LDS believe. To seek a world of 'fact' is to embrace the gospel as it was meant to be taught: all truth is circumscribed into one whole, to have faith in something proven to be not true is no faith at all.

Well, this is often the Way of apologetics -- to defend one's beliefs regardless of the truth or objectivity of the matter. I always liked the late Rodney King's response to all the polemics following his beating by the LA police: "Why can't we just get along?"

Update: Our "Apologist" has posted his response onto Mormon Dialogue and on his own blog. Evidently, his blog server lost all three of my entries above, or so he claims. Uh-huh...right.

The God Within

What triggers my post today is a concern, by many, about why does God not prevent disasters like what we've recently seen in Connecticut. 

 

I could argue that the Standard Definition of God, that is of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and all-good God is a logically impossible concept in the presence of evil.  Free agency of one person does not justify the senseless suffering of others. 

 

So the god of creeds, to me, simply does not exist -- it's the wrong definition.  I will submit to you that this does not mean 'there is no god', but what it really means is undefined.  And, as to the god that is 'out there', I'm going to leave that alone for a bit.  What I talk about here does not deny or address the existence of any god outside of ourselves -- And to be clear, what I talk about here is about our perception of god, and how that forms within us.

What I think of God

 

For the sake of this discussion, let's consider that the only god with which we have to do resides within six inches between our own ears, yet is distinct from our own consciousness.  Regardless of whether this is an interface to some power beyond, I think it is accurate to say that all perception of god happens within our own minds.  So let's explore how that affects our definition of god.

 

In my impression, historically, the understanding and doctrines of an external god emerged from our conscious attempts to explain that which we do not understand. In particular, all of us have thoughts and ideas that seem to appear from no-where. Some people even have minds structured to hear voices or see things outside of our consciousness.  Because some thoughts, most dreams, and even voices and images arise outside of and independently from our own conscious control, many become convinced there are beings out there that are "not us".

 

There is truth to that, but it need not be in any magical or supernatural way.  The truth is that the majority (if not all of) these "other beings" are not "out there", but rather "in here".

 

Sigmund Freud recognized distinct tendencies of the mind: id, ego, superego; but thought them to be part of a single thing, our psyche.  Even to today, the concept of separate, independent sentient identities within the mind has not been part of the literature.  however, new technologies, such as fMRI, as well as large-scale parallel processing architectures are radically changing our understanding of the wonder -- the absolute miracle -- of our minds.

 

To make a very long story short, the fact is that we DO have an entity within us, an eternal companion, that shares all of our memories, thoughts, and controls our feelings.  think of it as another program running in your brain-computer in parallel but completely independent from your consciousness program.  it doesn't talk to you in the same way that you talk to other people, but because it shares your thoughts, it is aware -- more emotionally aware of what is going on than your consciousness is.

 

The Mind Within is the Only God With Which We Have to Do

 

My view?  This mind within is god.  Or, at least "a god". 

 

Now, to not have all believers stop reading and get the impression that wayfarer is a dirty apostate heretic, we have three scriptural concepts that support this: (1) our divine nature coming from Heavenly Father, (2) the light of Christ, given to us at birth equating to our conscience, and (3) the Holy Ghost, which dwells within as our constant companion.  Whatever we may believe about the gods out there, I think we can and should agree that there is a god 'in here', and least, and set aside rejecting what I write here for a bit.

 

Back to my view; This god, the one 'in here', has always has been, and ever shall be -- it is eternal.  This is the god that has spoken to prophets and holy men and women in the past, and speaks today.  This god, properly understood, consists of millions of years of genetic evolutionary programming, and allows us to intuit things naturally. The god within communicates to other nonconscious minds around us through subtle nonverbal and sensory exchanges.  Importantly, this god within manages the interface between fear (right amygdala) and reward (left amygdala) so as to determine what we are to do to protect ourselves.  

 

How again does that work?

 

This is not some new-age mumbo-jumbo.  because of modern technologies, and due to research in the field of large-scale parallel processing architectures and machine intelligence, we are fundamentally changing our understanding of the mind.  The brain is a highly modular, asymetric parallel neural network processing architecture with both embedded firmware as well as adaptive self-learning nodes.  Our primitive von neumann computers of today barely scratch the surface of the massive parallelism of the brain, and it is only when we put massive numbers of processors together, particularly like a hadoop file/processing architecture, do we get a little of the idea.  

 

Think of our "consciousness" as one program within this processing architecture.  And think of our nonconscious god within as the network operating system -- and while this metaphor is primitive, you system geeks will understand the idea.

 

What understanding the God Within does for us:

 

I believe it is time for us to set aside the focus on the speculatively-defined god of our primitive religions and come to a full understanding of our true eternal companion: our god within.  When we do, we realize that our god within (1) listens to our prayers, because by articulating our needs, we implant them into our minds where our god can process them, and (2) answers our prayers through our feelings and new insight implanted by extensions to our neural network.  When we understand how this neurology works, we understand that our god within takes time to answer our prayers, because neural connections take time to emerge.  Particularly, we often need to sleep on things...allowing our conscious minds to let go of the problems -- unlocking memory structures -- so that our god can work on the problem. 

 

When we come to embrace the truth of our god within, we lose a lot of misconceptions about god.  our god within cannot restore a limb, but s/he can encourage our bodily systems to step up and fight disease, and in some cases heal us in a seeming miraculous way.  our god within cannot change another person, but can perceive feelings and concerns of another person so that we can better serve them.  our god within cannot change a natural disaster, but can motivate us to be prepared.  our god within is not just a "man", but is also both man and woman, father and mother, husband and wife, parent and child, and our true friend...that we mostly ignore.

 

Importantly, when some horrible event occurs, when a person does great evil and harms innocent children, our god within weeps with us as we come to grips with the magnitude of the horror.  And just like a good friend, rather than blaming our god within, we should draw near to him/her to help us both deal with the pain and sorrow of the tragedy.

 

"Be still and know that I am god"

 

In order to achieve the peace of mind so needed at these times of sorrow, and maybe always, I believe we need to be one with our god within, to be whole and better people.  We need to pray to our god within, and not assume that s/he is just part of our ego.  Far from it: our god has a distinct identity from us, and when we ignore him/her, we are non-integrated people.  Oneness with god, achieved through prayer and meditation, leads to an integrated state where our conscious mind and the separate god mind are in harmony.  

 

But you know?  Whenever I have tried to pray to myself, it doesn't seem to work.  It is my premise that our ancestors have been praying to this god, and s/he has been answering for thousands of years.  Hence, they created symbols and ritual to help us connect with god, and we are 'programmed' by that experience to draw to god through these symbols.  As I see it therefore, the symbols of our religions are a reflection of this unique relationship.  

 

I get a lot of value participating in the worship service, praying to a god 'out there', and performing the rituals of religion.  Paradoxically, these help me connect me to my god within.  This is why I am an active LDS...the spirit speaks to me, when I worship, pray, and participate.  When I serve in love, visiting families and giving, somehow I find peace and support from my god within.

I walk the Way alone

It started innocuously enough.  It was date-night last night, and we were talking about our youngest daughter, and how, if she were a boy, I might have had a son to accompany me to LDS general conference Priesthood meeting.  I have always gone alone, because we have no sons. 

We talked about how our youngest daughter, were she a son, would not go with me this time because at 20 she would be on a mission, because, as my wife said, "Going on a mission is a commandment."

I replied, "No, going on a mission is guidance, not a commandment."

She retorted, "Let me stop you right there.  We're not having this conversation."

I felt a bit hurt by that, but said as nicely as I could, "Why not?  That kind of shuts down dialog doesn't it?  I feel strongly that when we impute a 'commandment' from 'guidance', we create too many laws, too many rules, and isn't this exactly what Jesus objected to of the leaders of his time?"

Silence.

We went on to play miniature golf, trying our best to talk about nothing meaningful.  At one moment, delayed in our play, I mentioned that our delays give us a chance to talk.  She shook her head...no we're not going to talk.  At the end of the evening, were were sitting down over ice cream, and I realized we had nothing to say to each other.  I felt as awkward as I did at 16 on some of my very first dates. 

I recall my first date with my wife to be 34 years ago, I did ask her "What is the meaning of life."  She laughed and thought me strange.  We continued to date and got married a year and a day later.  We have had some very good times together, five wonderful daughters, and all the usual challenges and joys of a married life.  But we have never been able to talk about the Way and the answers, if any, to my very first question to her.  She merely tolerates my pursuits into the unknowable unknown, content in the certainty the Church gives her of the correctness of her path as a true believer.  I admire her constancy and certainty, but I am profoundly sad that we cannot share the joy I have found in the Way.

So, I walk the Way alone.  Sure, there are many others who share a view of the Way, but they are not here, and there is only so much we can do through words expressed on computer screens.  The nature of humanity is that we need each other, physically, emotionally, and spiritually present.  We communicate through nonverbal symbols and meaning that we cannot express in words.  Without this interpersonal presence, we are lacking -- I am lacking.

I have discovered that without the loving feedback from another human we cannot truly know ourselves: we emote things from our non-conscious mind that only can come back to us through the reflective non-conscious response from other humans.  Even animals can reflect our emotional status back to us, hence in touching and making eye and face contact with others, both human and otherwise, we see into ourselves and vice versa.

Peering into the eyes of another soul, and having that soul peer back at us creates a connection that cannot be simulated anywhere else.

Yet, as we become fearful of the influence of others; as we become resentful, tired, and frustrated at the wearying things we detest in our closest family and friends, we construct emotional walls in our emotional non-conscious minds that prevents the spiritual connection one with another.  In so peering into the eyes of another, instead of the joy of spiritual connection, we feel nothing.  We don't connect, because there is nothing to connect to -- the wall creates a defensive boundary that cannot be traversed.  I know I have done this in the past, and probably still do; but in the Way, one lets go of the fears and emotions that prevent one from sensing the Way and following it.

I have come to recognize, years ago, that it is impossible to change another human being.  I cannot force love, happiness, openness, or anything else.  I fail to do so many things that would be nice, to try to listen, to absorb, and to give in ways that might help.  I try to love unconditionally, but I fail, over and over again.  I keep hoping that giving, serving, loving unconditionally, and trying my best to listen, I will do that which is right and good.  Love needs no justification, it is beyond explanation.  I love because I must and cannot avoid it.  Sometimes, I do not feel love, acceptance, and validation in return -- maybe I expect too much.  But it does not change my love in the least. 

So, while I would guess that others may have companions and loved ones that share their path fully, this is not the case for me.  I walk the Way alone, today. 

Lao-tzu said,

How great is the difference between "eh" and "o"?
What is the distinction between "good" and "evil"?
Must I fear what others fear?
What abysmal nonsense this is!

The multitudes are peaceful and happy;
As if climbing a terrace in springtime to feast at the tai-lao sacrifice.
But I'm tranquil and quiet—not yet having given any sign.
Like a child who has not yet smiled.
Tired and exhausted—as though I have no place to return.

The multitudes all have a surplus.
I alone seem to be lacking.

Mine is the mind of a fool—ignorant and stupid!

Others see things clearly;
I alone am in the dark.
Others discriminate and make fine distinctions;
I alone am muddled and confused.

Formless am I! Like the ocean;
Shapeless am I! As though I have nothing in which I can rest.
The masses all have their reasons;
I alone am stupid and obstinate like a rustic.

But my values alone differ from those of others—
For I value drawing sustenance from the Mother.

I am certainly glad that no-one reads this stuff.

Mystery and the Middle Way

When I listen to Rachmaninoff's Vespers, I get a spiritual uplift that I really cannot explain.  There is something amazing from the very first "Amin" to the very last.  What is this feeling?  Is it the manipulation of the music?  Is it a cultural message that I've been brought up to know?

Rachmaninoff wrote the Vespers in 1916, shortly before the overthrow of the Tsar, when much was amiss in Russian society.  Sadly, the spiritual traditions from which Rachmaninoff wrote this amazing music would be lost for nearly a century.  Perhaps he suspected something would be lost.  There is deep in us, seemingly, a sense of the unknown that motivates, inspires, and alters our consciousness through its mystery.

I was reading a wonderful piece this morning entitled "Meaning of the Rachmaninoff Vespers", by Dr. M. R. Brett-Crowther:

Rachmaninov wrote this music in 1916, when the future of Russia was about to become a prolonged, dehumanizing catastrophe, through the Revolution which Nicholas II and Alexandra by their appalling policies had made inevitable. Even Nicholas’ abdication was the result of his incompetence.  But there is in Russian history, and in the heart of all Russians, a depth of sorrowful love, which receives catastrophe as a kind of revelation.  At least, this is the general argument of Nicholas Berdyaev, one of Russian Orthodoxy’s greatest writers and advocates.  As he says:

The mystery always remains; it is deepened by our knowledge.  Knowledge destroys only false mysteries created by our own ignorance, but there are other mysteries which confront us when we reach the depth of knowledge.  God is a mystery, and the knowledge of God is communicated in mystery.  Rational theology is false theology, for it denies the mystery that surrounds God.

I have spoken on this blog about how the Middle Way is one of truth, of sorting out or oneself what is true, discarding things that are not true, and adopting things that are.  Yet there are many things which remain 'unknowable' in my journey along the Way.

If I am honest with myself, really, truly, deeply honest, then I have to realize that much of what I believe is based upon assertion: My belief is not based upon a systematic, epistemological method, but rather, that it feels good to me.  I have suggested in other posts that this feeling of certainty can be dangerous, as it allows blind acceptance of things not true.

But to objectively put everything I believe into a 'true' or 'not true' category based upon critical thinking perhaps denies something that I cannot explain, or that upon explaining it and 'demystifying' it, it loses power to me. 

Objective pursuit of truth can be starkly depressing, as so much of what we believe of spiritual things cannot be proven or disproven.  And if I adopt the 'all or nothing' paradigm, then 'nothing' is a lonely place. 

I love the statement, above, by Nicholas Berdyaev.  The pursuit of knowledge in the Middle Way has allowed me to reject some things that simply are not true: literalism in things.  But as I plumb the depths of this knowledge, there is something that remains -- a mystery not of the unknown, but of the unknowable.  There is a connection between humans that cannot be fully explained in science.  Sure, I can surmise that the mechanisms of non-verbal communication, of the subtleties of our non-conscious mind connecting through subtle signals can connect with others in their non-conscious perceptions, but this hardly satisfies. 

Even the 'why' can be explained: evolution required us to relate together, to flock, much as birds do to survive the winters. 

But to rationalize the unknowable, the mystery of not only human connection, but the spiritual basis of all that is, is to lose sight of the wonder of all that is. 

If I think of agape, 'godly love', I don't think there are words to justify it, to explain it, to defend it.  It simply is.  Why I love, how I love...these are all a very deep mystery.  Yet I love -- that is a fact, an undeniable, unalterable fact.  And more so, I feel loved by something greater than myself, outside my conscious self.  The moment I try to explain this love, to rationalize it, I lose the sense of awe and mystery.

How many times have I heard music or spoken word that touches me to the core.  It isn't the words, it's the feeling.  How many times have I heard chant of scripture, any scripture, and been transported to another plane of existence: yet hearing the translation of the words, it has no power at all. 

If the Middle Way is about sorting out truth of things, I have to also admit the truth of spiritual feelings.  At one extreme, religious people tend to define these feelings of spirituality within the confines of their belief and arduously defend their beliefs.  At the other, the rational mind tends to reject the idea of spiritual feelings as being simply a manifestation of brain chemistry and emotion.  To these two poles, I ask, "Where does Godly Love (agape) fit"? 

And I would answer, "In the Middle". 

When I am into a mode of studying principles that defend my beliefs, or of arguing things about whatever, somehow I seem to lose a sense of awe and mystery that accompanies a faith in the unknowable.  I need that sense of awe and mystery.  I need to feel the wonder -- maybe it's just my personal feelings of inadequacy, or a program I was grown up to follow, I don't know or care.

How many times in my life have I realized how important it is to daily feast upon the Word and feel of the spirit.  A discipline of reading and praying tends to feed the soul in ways that cannot be achieved with intellectualism.  I need this, and yet, my reading and praying, of whatever form it is, cannot be and should not be an escape from reality.  My feasting upon the Word, my communion with god must lead me to a better, more fulfilled life, one connected with the realities of my personal situation and context.

This is a great paradox: by opening up my mind to the Mystery, I return to reality with a sense of purpose, of focus, and armed with the ability to sort out truth and what I need to do about it. 
 

On Being an Agnostic Mormon

Love the title, but I wouldn't immediately say that about myself, because I hate labels...

Being agnostic is formally the very most honest way to be a Latter Day Saint.  I say this with all sincerity and accuracy.  Consider the following quote:

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.  But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

(Paul to the Corinthians, first Epistle 13:9-12)

The most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the latter were all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprived its members the privilege of believing anything not contained therein. Latter Day Saints have no creed, but are ready to believe all true principles existing, as they are made manifest from time to time.
(Joseph Smith, History of the Church, v5 p215)

Joseph Smith started his journey with the First Vision, condemning creeds and their professors, not because they said wrong things -- they did not, not really -- but because the creeds declared an orthodoxy, and that orthodoxy would get in the way of honest investigation of truth.  The professors were corrupt by virtue of the fact that they claimed to know that which was not knowable.  To say that you know something when you don't know it is both dishonest and corrupt, because it contaminates one's ability to see truth when it comes along 'from time to time'.

To say "I don't know" can be the best and is often the most honest answer.  To say "I know" and then to say either "...the church is true" or "...the church is not true", is not an accurate statement.  While some might defend the statement 'the church is not true' because the church says things it knows to be false (justified by the "milk before meat" idea), the reality is that the church addresses, through prophecy, the vast unknown.  Paul's use of the word "prophecy" is interesting -- it's a method of filling in the gap between what we "know in part" and that vast unknown.  Prophecy, as applied in scripture, is that which is given by inspiration, to the mind and heart of the prophets -- it's not a perfect, flawless process -- it's the ability to accept in faith our best, inspired guess.  It is not to know a thing. -- and in recognizing our 'not knowing', one can best sort out the truth of things.

Alma defined faith in this way: "Faith is not a perfect knowledge of things, therefore if ye have faith, ye hope for things that are not seen, but are true."  What makes faith different from belief is the explicit aknowledgement that I do not know, but am willing to trust and try something out (act on it).

Alma lays out a speciic test of any given principle: either it grows or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, and you've given it a chance, you can, appropriately, throw the seed out.  What's important about the Alma 32 experiment is that it is specific to a given principle -- "In that thing" -- and not the entire garden.  Too often, the idea to test an unknowable belief, or an entire belief structure, is not a valid test, because it goes beyond what one can know with a simple "yes, it grows" or "no, it does not grow" answer. 

For example, to test the question, "Is the church true", by Alma 32 is fraught with problems.  Being a vast set of beliefs, it is an untestable proposition by Alma 32 -- it's not specific to a specific thing, because the truth of the church is mixed with human judgment and sometimes profound errors.  So, in exercising the experiment, one can either feel good about it -- it grows, or feel nothing -- it doesn't.  If I feel good, and then conclude 'the church is true', then there is a danger of accepting a blanket orthodoxy containing both truth and the human judgment and profound errors in the church as being 'true' as well -- not wise to do.  If I don't feel good about it, the I might conclude 'the church is not true', and then reject things that really are in fact useful, helpful, and uplifting.

Instead, Alma suggests testing a specific thing:  I can test to see if a specific teaching or practice has value to me, and in so doing, I get a comfort with that principle or practice.  I can ask the question, in faith, "Does the Book of Mormon contain truth and relevant teachings for me and my family?".  It's a specific question, and in reading the book, discovering the value, and then praying about what I've read, I can come to a knowledge that the Book of Mormon has significant value to me, and teaches truths relevant to my life.  I exercised faith by reading the book because I recognized that I did not know if it had value.  I did not cast out the book because of my unbelief, in whatever form that may have taken, but I gave it a legitimate test in faith.  As a result of my test, I came to a specific piece of knowledge -- the book contains valuable, relevant truths for me.  Test complete.  Faith exercised.  Knowledge gained.  Alma 32 works in the specific. 

Alma asks, is this all there is to know?  And he says "no, you've only exercised faith in that specific thing".  You don't know at this point, whether the book is historically true.  You can ask that question, but if you don't put it to a test, including both mind and heart, acting in faith on that thing.

What does that mean when it comes to whether the book is historical?   It means openly and honestly probing whether the book indeed has that history.  If it turns out that my test in faith does not result in mind and heart agreeing that it's history -- then I have to recognize that I do not know (unprovable), or I know it doesn't (be careful here -- requires proving a negative absolute).   As long as something is not proven to be false, I can still hope, I can still have faith, but I need to recognize that I still don't know.  So many of the Church's teachings are in this category.  Faith continues, because we recognize we don't know -- and that's just fine.

This process of defining what we believe through our own experience is actually at the core of both Joseph Smith's teachings (as noted above), and as well, in the temple endowment, in both the creation as well as garden of eden dramatization -- man was to learn through his own experience to distinguish good and evil -- and not partake of the predefined tree of orthodox knowledge of good and evil.

Unfortunately, the church through "correlation" has managed to create the appearance of an orthodoxy, enforced by things like the 14 fundamentals and other social pressure. Nothing could be further from the original purpose of the church -- I hold hard on the idea that there are no creeds -- no orthodoxy -- and only the challenge to discover "all true principles existing." In my humble opinion, suspending naive belief that too early asserts knowledge, and recognizing that we truly don't know, is the very best way to discover truth

As Lao Tzu said, "Not knowing is true knowledge".

So...perhaps being a Mormon Agnostic is not such a bad thing, when we really, honestly, don't know.

Baal Shem Tov and Joseph Smith

Baal Shem Tov, "Besht" for short, was the founder of the Hasidic movements, and was an 18th century mystic in what is now Ukraine.  Besht was to Judaism what Joseph Smith was to Christianity: he had mystical experiences, and turned Judaism upsidedown, fighting against the moribund rabbinical talmudic scholars as Joseph Smith fought against the creeds and orthodoxy.

Of all things last night, his name kept coming up in my dreams.  So, reading this morning the wikipedia entry about Baal Shem Tov this morning, I read about his teachings about god and man.  Here are some excerpts:

He declared the whole universe, mind and matter, to be a manifestation of the Divine Being; that this manifestation is not an emanation from God, as is the conception of the Kabbalah by Mitnagdim, for nothing can be separated from God: all things are rather forms in which God reveals Himself. When man speaks, said Besht, he should remember that his speech is an element of life, and that life itself is a manifestation of God 

Whoever does not believe that God resides in all things, but separates God and them in his thoughts, has not the right conception of God.
(wikipedia)

In Doctrine and Covenants 88, Joseph Smith states the same thing: that god, or at least the power of god is everywhere.  Joseph Smith thought of god as being everywhere in the beginning of his teachings, but towards the end said unequivocally, that god is a man, with material flesh and body.  Besht is panentheistic in a way that LDS might not accept, yet if we accept that the Holy Ghost dwells within us, then at least the HG is physically resident in us.  As for panentheism, consider these two verses:

D&C 88:13 The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.

Moses 6:63 And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.

My feeling is that Joseph Smith was a mystic, and did not fully comprehend his own thoughts and revelations about the integral nature of god and man.  He came as close as any Christian had done until that time, and by bringing god out of the ex-nihilo idealism of plato, Joseph Smith did much to move the needle.   Perhaps JS did understand, fully, this mystical vision, but at the time, the Saints were only ready for a conventional definition of god.  Milk before meat.

It is equally fallacious to think of a creation in time: creation, that is, God’s activity, has no end. God is ever active in the changes of nature: in fact, it is in these changes that God’s continuous creativeness consists.
(wikipedia)

Again, in section 88, the idea that the power of god is god and that it is the laws of nature within its respective kingdom.  Besht had identified three dimensions of reality similar to three kingdoms of glory.

Besht's concept of eternal creation is a marvellous concept.  Getting away from a physical point-in-time creation narrative, this idea that the act of creation, the garden of eden story as taught in temples, is not merely an historical event, but the ongoing creation narrative as humans deal with god and the world here and now.

The first result of his principles was a remarkable optimism. Since God is immanent in all things, all things must possess something good in which God manifests Himself as the source of good. (wikipedia)

This as well characterizes LDS thinking: Rather than the totally depraved world of the Calvinists and Catholics, LDS believe in the divine nature of creation, the world, and humans.  We are inherently optimistic (or at least should be).

For this reason, the Besht taught, every man must be considered good, and his sins must be explained, not condemned. One of his favorite sayings was that no man has sunk too low to be able to raise himself to God. Naturally, then, it was his chief endeavor to convince sinners that God stood as near to them as to the righteous, and that their misdeeds were chiefly the consequences of their folly.
(wikipedia)

This is a lesson many of us should realize in the church, especially on the topic of church discipline, and on how to treat those who don't share the TBM point of view.

From the very beginning Besht fought against that contempt for the world which, through the influence of Isaac Luria’s Kabbalah, had almost become a dogma among the Jews.

Again, back to the idea of the sacredness of creation.  This concept of the world's inherent goodness puts perspective on the hasidic concept of tikkum olam/repair of the world into context -- we should be caring for the world, treating it with utmost respect -- an inherently green viewpoint so needed today.  Not sure I see that attitude, politically, in LDS thinking, although many prophetic teachings speak of caring for the land.

He considered care of the body as necessary as care of the soul; since matter is also a manifestation of God, and must not be considered as hostile or opposed to Him.
(wikipedia)

This is doctrinally identical to LDS thinking.  All spirit is matter.  And it adds life to the idea that the Word of Wisdom, in its original intent and not current interpretation, is to care for the body.

...he fought the rigidity and sanctimony that had accreted to strict Talmudic viewpoints while not abrogating a single religious ceremony or observance. His target was the great importance which the Talmudic view attaches to the fulfillment of a law, while almost entirely disregarding sentiment or the growth of man’s inner life.
(wikipedia)

I sense that Besht was a bit of a Middle Way Jew.

While the rabbis of his day considered the study of the Talmud as the most important religious activity, Besht laid all the stress on prayer. “All that I have achieved,” he once remarked, “I have achieved not through study, but through prayer”. Prayer, however, is not merely petitioning God to grant a request, nor even necessarily speaking to God, but rather (“cleaving”, dvekut)— the glorious feeling of ’Oneness with God Almighty’, the state of the soul wherein a man or woman gives up their consciousness of separate existence, and join their own selves to the Eternal Being of God Supreme. Such a state produces indescribable bliss, which is the foremost fruit of the true worship of God.
(wikipedia)

This.  I cannot say more or better than the above.  This is the essence of the mystical experience -- that which is achieved through revelation.  Joseph Smith said that all members "who receive the holy ghost receive revelation, for the holy ghost is a revelator" -- thus to 'receive the holy ghost' upon confirmation, is to seek revelation daily in one's life as befitting one who has received the gift of the holy ghost.  Sometimes revelation comes in words, but only rarely.  The mystical experience is a oneness with god that cannot be described in words.

I believe Joseph Smith was a mystic like Baal Shem Tov.  Besht lived a longer life, and his followers picked up much more of the mystical message than Joseph's successors, who were more inclined to create the more traditional Christian LDS church that we have today.  I, for one, love to embrace Joseph's original mysticism as a pattern for my own spiritual journey.

The Mormon Truth Heuristic

This is a work in process -- I'm posting to save it and get initial thoughts.

Mormons often state in their testimony, "I know the Church is true".  It's a remarkable claim, full of hope, passion, and certainty.  To those outside the culture, particularly from other, competing faiths, it seems to be arrogant as well.  It isn't intended to be, but rather, it intends to be a confession of faith (not knowledge) that the Church (what Mormons call their religious organization, culture, and everything else with it) is true and relevant to testifier, personally.  Those may not be their words, but that is the intent. 

Those of us trained in critical thinking and in epistemology find the statement also to be deeply problematic.  To know something is to have justified true belief in it -- proof from evidence that the thing being testified to is indeed 'true' and not in any way false.  Yet the statement of 'knowing' something to be true when there is no proof has deep precedent:

Examine Job's claim:

 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

Job 19:25-27

This powerful witness is Job's prophetic utterance: he 'knows' by some means that an unseen being exists, will stand on the earth, and that after death, in the flesh, Job will see his redeemer.  This "I know" (hebrew "yada", and in the Septuiguint "oida") is quite certainly "knowledge".  From the point of view of evidence, of epistemological validity, Job has no basis, not justification for this belief, therefore he has no "knowledge" of it, yet he says he "knows".

Moving forward to the Gospels, both Peter and Martha are found to testify that about something that is not apparent from the evidence.  They do not use the term "know" but it is quite certain language:

Jesus saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.

Matthew 16:15-17

Although Peter isn't saying he knows, he makes a propositional, definitive truth cliam, "Thou art the Christ".  How can he make this claim?  He makes it not through tangible evidence, but through exclusively a spiritual kind -- the witness of the "Father which is in heaven."  Again, the critical thinking epistemologist may not be satisfied, because such an intangible witness might as well be a personal feeling of certainty.  While valid and important to Peter, it does not provide evidence except to the Peter himself. 

 

In the case of Martha, she states unequivocally the following to Jesus upon the death of Lazarus:

Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.
John 11:27

The critical thinking epistemologist might approve of the term 'believe' in this case.  Even moreso, the writer of John uses the verb "πιστεύω"/pisteuo, which means more of "faith" rather than belief.  This expression is quite distinct from Job's "yada"/"oida" of certain knowledge, but it is also not "belief".  Pisteuo involves a working trust in something: more like "I trust (accept, agree, hope) that thou art the Christ".  As evidence of that trust, she was finished with the conversation expressing her concerns about Lazarus' death, and went back to her business.  She acted on her faith by turning over her concerns to Jesus and moving on, trusting that he had things under control.

 

These three ways of expressing faith-based knowledge -- Job in saying "I know", Peter in making a certainty proposition, and Martha in expressing faith -- all are part of the way religious people confess their faith.  It should be no surprise that Mormons make similar claims about their own faith.  But how do Mormons form their truth claims?  

 

The Mormon Truth Heuristic -- Short Form

 

There are two terms in this that need to be defined: Truth, and Heuristic.  First, from Joseph Smith:

Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.
Doctrine and Covenants 93:24

A remarkable statement: simple, precise.  It is controversial in using the term 'knowledge' in it, but whatever is that truth of things as they are, were, and are to come is ineffectual unless we know about them.  Truth is simply things as they are.  Truth in history is things as they were.  Truth in the future?  if we say with certainty that X will happen, and we have justified belief that it will happen, and it happens, then for purpose of this discussion, it is true.

 

The second term, heuristic, literally means the means to find something out.  In modern use, especially in the field of computability, a heuristic solves problems with a short-cut, a trial-and error method, when a finite, deterministic algorithm is impractical.  By using the term "truth heuristic", I mean how LDS explore truth through a specific trial and error testing process, and the tendency to use that method to short-cut an exhaustive investigation of truth.

 

The first version of the truth heuristic is encountered in the very first missionary discussion, where missionaries present the Book of Mormon, and encourage investigators to ready, ponder, and pray.  Here is the "Moroni Challenge" universally accepted as the means to test the truth of the Book of Mormon:

I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, ... and ponder it in your hearts.

And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

Moroni 10:3-5

So the investigator is to read, ponder 'it', and pray, and the outcome is that teh truth of 'it' will be manifest by a feeling of certainty that Mormons call, "the Holy Ghost".  I have emphasized 'it', because the term is non-specific.  'it' could refer to what is read, or the entire book.  'it' could refer to the spiritual 'truth', symbolic in nature of what is read, or that the events in the book literally happened as reflected.

 

Reading, pondering, and praying about something to assess whether it has spiritual value to you as a reader is certainly a valid test.  But as for whether the events in the book literally happened, or whether the book as a whole can be proposed as 'true', meaning without material flaw, accurate, god-given, etc., 'it' becomes a bit problematic.

 

This is where the heuristic becomes a short-cut.  When missionaries return for a second visit, they ask about the experience the investigator had about the verses they were asked to read.  These verses are spiritually powerful in the text, and many investigators, if open minded, will have a positive, comforting experience with the text.  Because many who grew up believing the Bible to be the word of God tend to relate to King James English as being 'scriptural', they may even have had a very powerful emotional and spiritual experience with the material.  At that point, the missionaries describe these feelings as the "Holy Ghost" telling them that the Book of Mormon is true.  Without being specific, they have taken spiritual value associated with specific verses and generalized that evidence to the entire book and by implication, its history and divinity. 

 

Now that the heuristic has determined that the Book of Mormon is true and divine, then the means whereby the Book of Mormon came about must also be true and divine.  After all, it is impossible for a thing of God to come out of anything other than a true Prophet.  In glowing terms, the story of Joseph Smith and his position of Prophet of the Restoration is laid out.  The investigator learns of the miracle of a farm-boy with very little formal education translating this divine book by the gift and power of god.  The investigator is asked, "Could any man have written this book?", and the the investigator remembers the spiritual feelings and believes that Joseph could not have been a normal man, but indeed a true Prophet.  And from there, a True Church -- the ONLY true and living church -- because that was the content of the First Vision.

 

So from a very basic and essential spiritual test of whether the Book of Mormon has spiritually valid content, the investigator inductively concludes that the Church as presented by the missionaries is "true".  Having had a spiritual awakening, the associated bond to the missionaries, the Book, and to the Church is complete, and the investigator becomes a member.

 

Conversion is an emotional/spiritual process.  Seldom does anyone become converted by virtue of logic and reason.  Yet, the disturbing part of this short-cut heuristic is that the conclusion of truth of the whole is inductively derived from a specifc test of a specific reading of the Book.  In making the inductive leap from that specific test to the truth of the whole is glossed over. 

 

The heuristic itself is valid, when it applies to investigating a specific issue, to working it through in one's mind, and then to seek spiritual guidance as to whether that specific issue has merit, is true, or is relevant.  The outcome of this is a type of experiential knowledge -- a justification that the belief is true.  What is invalid is the movement from specifc to the general, from a subject claim of value to an objective claim of truth.

 

What really happens with the short-cut heuristic

 

Before going in to what is happening in the mind with conversion, it is important to recognize that to LDS thinking, all spiritual reality is material as well.  Thus, the spiritual processes of conversion are coupled with physical processes in the brain.  To investigate what is happening physically with conversion does not minimize the spiritual reality thereof, but it does help us understand why it happens, and what it means to be converted.

 

When the missionary asks the investigator to ready, ponder, and pray, the reading creates a set of mental pictures from the narrative, as we would get from any book with a narraative story.  As we form these mental images in our short-term memory, our mental processes need to stop input and process the information in order to commit it, place it, into our long term memory.  Moroni's promise asks us to ponder, not just what is read, but also, a deeply embedded narrative in Western culture:

Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
Moroni 10:3

The narrative of the mercy of God to the children of men is deeply embedded in every active Christian from early childhood.  These stories have a parallel emotional context in the child's brain -- emotions of security and how god protects them from fear.  The "emotional context" is found in another part of the brain than logic: it forms the limbic system of the brain, where primal fears and desires are located.  By bringing into the Book of Mormon context the emotional context from a Christian's childhood, the investigator is planting a seed of associations between the visual images of the Book of Mormon narrative and the emotional context of scripture stories.  Even the use of King James English re-enforces this religious/emotional context.

 

By pondering these things together, the investigator is triggering an event within the nonconscious part of the mind -- that which helps us implant long-term memories through dreams and other mechanisms.  After pondering, and perhaps stepping away from the Book and sleeping on it, the nonconscious mind makes neural associations between the act of reading the Book, the visual images, and the positive experiences from the investigators' youth about biblical stories.  As the investigator prays about this, particularly after some time for the non-conscious mind to extend the neural associations, the investigator feels a spiritual comfort about the Book of Mormon.  That comfort is located in the limbic mind, in the amygdala, right in the same general location as "love", "comfort", "happiness": it is a feeling of knowing that something is true -- an emotion, not a logical construct. 

 

It's as if the investigator has fallen in love with the Book of Mormon, and all things associated with it.  And quite similar to falling in love, the objectivity of the cerebral cortext -- the locus of conscious, rational thought, takes a secondary seat to the feeling of knowing and love for all things Mormon.  This feeling of knowing, of comfort, can be extraordinarily powerful.  It creates a strong dependency of all things mormon to and through the primary emotional chain that started with an emotional/spiritual experience after reading, pondering, and praying, to the core truth claims of the church, to the existence and relevance of the entire church structure and teachings.  By falling in love, and making a deep, personal commitment, the limbic mind creates a bond between the investigator and the church -- one that is very hard to break.

 

While this may sound illogical to make such a life choice based upon an emotional bond, the origin of this bond in evolution is quite critical to the survival of species.  Humans are social animals out of necessity: the survival of individuals is greatly enhanced in the extent to which humans are part of a tribe, flock, or group of people.  The emotional bonding of the investigator to the Church is by no means a bad thing -- the Church is a very suitable tribal structure, with extensive support for the survival of the individual who fully commits to it.  The need to be part of such an organization is vital to any human, as it has been for millions of years. 

 

So there is benefit to joining the Church, tremendous benefit.  But maintaining the same type of short-cut truth heuristic for all decisions within the Church is deeply problematic.

The problem with the Short-Cut Truth Heuristic

In a sense, the idea of converting to the church through a single experience with the spirit is a bit like falling in love with a person, and the moment

In sorting out truth of things, it is helpful to have a testable proposition.  Take the statement "The Book of Mormon is true": This is a testable proposition, provided we first define what the word "true" means.  One definition would be absolute truth: every word, statement, claim, history, origin in the book is exactly what it says it is - an accurate history of the Native American people, translated from golden plates written a language called "reformed egyptian", etc.   Every claim about the book needs to be true in order for the claim of absolute truth applies.

Proving an absolute claim is difficult, because it requires that all aspects of the book be shown to not have any flaws or falsehoods.  In a book with 500 pages, with a history that cannot be fully verified, the ability to prove it to be true in an absolute sense is impossible.  However, it is quite easy to prove it is not true.  A single fact that is not possible would bring down the claim.  For example, if it is not possible for a beheaded individual to sit up, struggle, then expire, then the book at least has some things in it that aren't strictly 'true'.

But most LDS will be satisfied with a feeling that it is true. 
 

 

 

 

 

truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come
D&C 93:24

 

The Second Coming...?

There is a mainstream thinking in Christianity that the events of revelation, and all the prophecies of the New Testament respecting the Second Coming already happened with the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. This concept is called "Preterism", and is widely held by the Roman Catholic church, but completely rejected by dispensational millienialist evangelicals and, of course, LDS.

There are very good reasons for preterism. Matthew 24 starts with a foretelling of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, then talks of the fulfilling of Daniel's abomination of desolation. Importantly, the biblical version of Matthew states explicitly:

Matthew 24:34: Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

Pretty clear stuff. Presuming this is intoned about 30 CE with a life expectancy at the time generally not to exceed 70 years old (average much younger due to infant mortality), indeed 70 AD would be about the time that most of that generation of adults would be passing away. And the events of the destruction of Jerusalem were as catastrophic to the Jewish people -- the ones who made up the first Christians -- as anything you could possibly imagine. Preterists say, "Timing is everything", because you can't get by this first century timing in context.

But then again, LDS are not constrained to keep to the bible texts. If a given verse didn't fit his dispensational millenial view, the Joseph could 'translate' it correctly, and so he did:

Joseph Smith Translation, Matthew 24:34:Verily, I say unto you, this generation, in which these things shall be shown forth, shall not pass away until all I have told you shall be fulfilled.

This changes the meaning from the idea that the generation to which Jesus spoke ("this") to the generation in which "these things shall be shown forth" -- meaning that the entire elapsed time of the cataclysmic events of the second coming would happen in one generations typical lifetime -- and I guess this would be about 100 years in today's numbers.

But we also have earlier in Matthew, to my knowledge untouched by JST:

Mattthew 16:27-28: For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

"Some" is not just "one" as might be the case with John. Some equals more than one. And what was the Kingdom? The Pharisees specifically wanted to know when this kingdom would come, and in Luke we have Christ's answer:

Luke 17:20-21:And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:  Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Oops.  Uhhh. Is that really saying that there is no physical kingdom of God coming, that it's right here...within me?   Now we can deal all day long with the idea that the bible is full of contradictions (as is the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Journal of Discourses, conference talks, Ensigns....). But when it comes right down to it, Christ taught that the "Kingdom" would come during the lifetime of those he was teaching to in the flesh, right there, that cataclysmic events would befall them, including explicitly the destruction of Jerusalem, and that to look for the Kingdom out there is futile...because at some point, you might find it within you.

This message was held by those who first preached the gospel. Paul believed he was in the end generation:

Romans 16:20: And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.

1 Cor 10:11: Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

As did James:

James 5:7-8: Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

The 'brethren' to which James spoke were those in the Jerusalem church over which he was bishop. He, the brother of the Lord, had a pretty good understanding of the meaning of Christ's mission.

Now, whether James and others interpreted that the cataclysmic events -- accurately prophesied to happen shortly after James' death -- were also going to have a vindication of the coming of the Christ in glory, they did not have a great handle on this. Had they read the Matthew and Luke gospels, they might have seen that somehow Christ really meant a 'symbolic' coming -- the coming of the holy ghost.  But of course they didn't exist yet.

Or...perhaps since the gospels were written AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem, with no attendant second coming of Christ in glory, someone decided to revise Christ's words to say that it was all symbolic.

We may never know.  Pascal's wager, anyone?

The Message of the First Vision

Within the Middle of the First Vision, one of the personages gives Joseph Smith the core message of the first vision, found in the following:

I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time.

That’s the entire Message of the First Vision, as stated in the 1838 account and part of the official History of the Church. LDS consider this statement scripture. The Personage is accepted by LDS as Jesus Christ. For simplicity, we’ll refer to the Personage as Christ and the text above as the Message.
The Message makes a number of important claims.

1. Join none of them, for they were all wrong. This is a tough statement, and very polemic. Perhaps for this reason, alone, Christians have such a vitriolic reaction to the LDS church: it starts out in its first, founding statement that the Churches are all wrong. By itself, it’s not helpful, for we have to explore the reasons for which the Personage said they’re all wrong.

2. All their creeds are an abomination in his sight. This is very tough language as well. When we look at the creeds, some of them are quite difficult to understand, but most are straightforward and uncontroversial. In fact, the first two, below, are relatively similar to the Articles of Faith. Gradually, the principles are expanded to include doctrine not consistent with LDS teaching (listed as “false doctrine”, below). Evenutally the creeds depart significantly from the original beliefs of the church as taught by Jesus. But the Message says “all their creeds”, not just the latter one. Here are the creeds:

• The Old Roman Creed (2nd Century). No false doctrine.
• The Apostles’ Creed (3rd Century). No false doctrine. A mention is made of the “Holy Catholic Church”, but this is meant to mean that there is a universal church of Jesus Christ — that the worldly organization was established by Christ.
• The Nicene Creed (325 CE). A single word of false doctrine is introduced, “ὁμοούσιον”/”homoousion”, meaning “single substance”, implementing the dogma of the trinity that there is one god in substance/essence who exists in three persons. Homoousion is never found in scripture or in the earliest writings, it is an invention to fix in dogma the relationship between God the Father and Jesus.
• Latin version of the Nicene Creed (?) This adds terms such as “God of Gods” and that the Holy Ghost proceeds from both the Father and the Son (Filioque). There are a couple polemic versions batting this concept back and forth between Catholic traditions.
• The Chalcedonian Creed (451 CE). This continues to expand on the homoousion/Consubstantial dogma.
• The Athanasian Creed (late Fifth Century, 100 years after Athanasius). This is the most complex creed of all, containing a lot of illogical language about one in three but not three…, as James E Talmage would say, "It would be difficult to conceive of a greater number of inconsistencies and contradictions expressed in words as few."

Aside from the Athanasian Creed, why should they ALL be an abomination? Two of them, the most common used by the Protestant Churches, are nothing but a statement of belief, entirely consistent with the LDS Articles of Faith.

Could it be that the mere idea of a creed – a required statement of belief on the part of a Christian is an abomination?  We have Joseph Smith's actual words to interpret why creeds were an abomination:

The most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the latter were all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprived its members the privilege of believing anything not contained therein. Latter Day Saints have no creed, but are ready to believe all true principles existing, as they are made manifest from time to time.  (Joseph Smith, History of the Church, v5 p215)

One of the truly amazing things about the LDS church is that ‘doctrine’ is extraordinarily hard to fix. I propose that this is intentional. From the very beginning, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young innovated on doctrinal topics, exploring possibilities, and in some cases, saying some pretty outrageous things. Critics of the church sieze upon these speculative explorations and declare that “This is what the Church believes”, when in fact we do not. We must recognize that when ‘orthodoxy’ is set aside, then it is possible, even encouraged, to explore what might be meant by the message of the gospel.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Church leaders standardized the teachings of the church and set aside a lot of the speculative theology espoused by earlier generations. This may have been necessary to allow for consistent teachings, but should not be construed as ‘orthodoxy’ — a mandated set of beliefs that must be strictly adhered to. “What is taught” is equivalent to “Church Doctrine”. It is distinct from what is believed by the member is his or her own testimony — a personal witness constructed from personal learning, prayer, and spiritual experience. The fact that we teach a standard church doctrine does not absolve us from the responsibility to learn from our own experience to distinguish good and evil — this is a most important principle: We must think for ourselves: the Church provides guidelines in “What is taught”, it does not mandate thought or belief.

This lack of ‘orthodoxy’ was the hallmark of the restored church: man was not to pluck of the fruit of a tree of predefined dogma, but rather, to learn for himself to distinguish good and evil. The original definition of “heretic” from the greek means “to think for oneself”. Joseph Smith was an original, authentic heretic. To Joseph Smith, knowledge was the fruit of seeking truth — for “all truth” was meant to be part of the Gospel. “Truth is knowledge of things as the are, as they were, and as they are to come.”

If the Gospel is “all truth”, and mankind is to discover it line upon line and precept upon precept, then the core teachings of the Church must include a means to discern truth from all things. And the good news of the Book of Mormon is that this means to discern truth is through the Holy Ghost, and from the Doctrine and Covenants, the Holy Ghost witnesses after we study it out in our minds. Here is the truth paradigm of the church: To seek out of the best books learning, and by experience in faith, to study out these things in our minds, and to seek confirmation by the Spirit that each thing is true.
What works against this truth paradigm is a declaration that “THIS is what you are to BELEIVE (credo, creed)”, and you are to accept this dogma without question or doubt. If a loving God wants us to learn, the learning is best done by experience and emotional bonding with the truth — best done through experience and not through rote dogma. For this loving God/Parent, the fixed answerbook of a “Creed” is a cheat — an abomination to the type of learning designed from the beginning to be “The Plan of Salvation”.

3. Those professors were all corrupt. Again, a very polemic statement — insulting in the extreme to the preachers of other faiths. But it doesn’t say ‘preachers’, but rather, ‘professors’. A professor is a teacher, one who is supposed to know the truth, and provide as accurate of a truth to the students. A ‘corrupt professor’ is one who violates the profession of a professor – that is, either doesn’t teach, or teaches falsehood as if it were truth.

I’m going to suggest that Christ was extraordinarily precise in his statement: those who then were preaching from the creeds as if that was the thing all people must accept on faith without doubt were corrupt in promoting such dogma. Professors who fail to help their students think critically and bond their learnings with personal experience are a menace to learning. Rote learning can do nothing but indoctrinate. It cannot teach — it prevents critical thinking, so necessary for an objective determination of truth. Those who profess and teach dogma as if it were truth, and then base all ‘knowledge’ on the dogma, are creating a type of tyranny over the mind of man that prevents real knowledge of truth. Such practice is corrupt indeed.

4. They teach for doctrine the commandments of men. Christ then quotes Isaiah 29:13 linked to 2 Timothy 3 with an important conjunction between the two. Isaiah 29:13 says:

Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:

2 Timothy 3:5 says:

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

The quote in the Message blends these two with the highlighted conjunction:

they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.

The term ‘doctrine’ means either “what is taught” or “dogma”. Since the expression “they teach for [what is taught] the commandments of men” doesn’t make a lot of sense, the meaning “They teach for [dogma] the commandments of men” fits much better within this context.

According to the Message, Christ condemned the creeds and professors, and then explicitly states that the practice to be condemned is the teaching of doctrine (dogma) constructed from the commandments of men. Elsewhere, multiple times, Christ states explicitly that the only ‘doctrine’ or ‘dogma’ that rises to the level of “Doctrine of Christ” is as stated in 2 Nephi chapters 31-32, 3 Nephi 11, and here in Doctrine and Covenants Section 10:

67 Behold, this is my doctrine—whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me, the same is my church. 68 Whosoever declareth more or less than this, the same is not of me, but is against me; therefore he is not of my church. 69 And now, behold, whosoever is of my church, and endureth of my church to the end, him will I establish upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.

In other words, the core Doctrine of Christ is quite simple: it comprises of the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel as stated in the Articles of Faith, without the explicit definition of things one must know or declare as dogma. Note clearly that Christ’s “Church” consists of those who keep to these core principles and those who declare more or less as core principles is not of Christ’s church.

While this seems like an extreme statement, the point is clear: the only ‘dogma’ — that which is to be accepted without doubt — is the need to repent and come to Christ, and endure to the end with him. All other things are either to be learned from experience, or are not required as core beliefs. We declare a set of beliefs in the Articles of Faith, but there is no absolute requirement to accept these things without determining for ourselves that they are true.

It is absolutely essential to understand that “commandments of men” are not forbidden, but they must not be construed as the “Doctrine of Christ”. They are not to be taught as if they must be accepted without doubt or personal testimony. Teaching commandments of men as if they are doctrine is explicitly forbidden by scripture, therefore as a responsible member of Christ’s church, one must recognize the difference between the Doctrine of Christ, and that which must be tested, as Alma proposes in Alma 32.

5. Join none of them. This is stated at the very beginning and end of the Message. Joseph had come asking which one to join, and Christ gave him his answer: do not join up with an organization that subjects the mind to the tyranny of dogma.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints does not use the term “Dogma” in explaining what the Church believes. There is no Westminster Confession, a long statement of belief intended to be taught and professed verbatim by members. There are no creeds recited each sunday and required as a declaration of belief by the member. Each and every principle in the Church is intended to be witnessed by the individual member through his or her own testimony: not a rote version to be memorized, but rather, through one’s own personal experience with the Spirit.

To be sure, there is a cultural tendency, reinforced by some unfortunate statements from the pulpit at BYU devotionals and General Conference, that members are to observe with exactness every word that proceeds forth from the mouth of the prophet and servants of the Lord, without question or doubt. Such observation in faith should never violate one’s responsibility to learn from experience and by spiritual confirmation the truth of all things.

To me, the Message of the First Vision is extremely important and clear: we are to be very wary of things that appear like ‘dogma’ — that which is to be accepted without doubt or question. With the singular exception of repenting and coming to Christ, all things are subject to question and spiritual confirmation.