D&C 24: Preaching, Patience, and Pruning

This section is the first of three revelations given as church leaders were in "partial seclusion" for fear of persecution.  I have to wonder if the vague terms the section header uses to refer to the persecution is a way of softening up the audience for later.  

See, I had no idea when I was in seminary that the "persecution" that landed Joseph Smith dead outside Carthage Jail was largely about polygamy.  But by the time you get to the era when polygamy was a thing, you've been prepared to dismiss persecution as some aimless evil because it's been described in such non-specific but clearly negative language as early on in the story as 1830.  Joseph won't marry Fanny Alger until more than two years after this section and polygamy won't really kick into high gear until almost ten years after this section.  But when we get to that point in the story we'll be used to not knowing the specific motivations for anti-Mormonism—and we'll be used to not having to know them.

Paperback Writer

Today's reading begins with some problematic but not necessarily damning word choice:

Behold, thou wast called and chosen to write the Book of Mormon, and to my ministry;

Yes, God said "write."  And yes, he was talking to Joseph Smith—the chapter summary confirms verses 1-9 and directed at Joseph and verse 10 refers to Oliver Cowdery as "thy brother Oliver." 

So what does this mean, exactly?  I fully admit this is not a smoking gun, but this sure is an odd way for God to phrase his sentence.  Joseph didn't do any of the actual writing of the Book of Mormon, of course, because he had scribes for that.  So if God isn't referring to the physical inscription of the words when he uses the verb "write," what is he referring to?  Is he referring to the act of authorship?  Is God saying Joseph's job was to come up with this stuff?

It's not totally crazy, considering the original publication of the Book of Mormon had Joseph listed as the "author and proprietor."  It does seem crazy that God himself would have called Joseph to fabricate a book of stories to be passed off as religious history and then dropped a hint about this in a later revelation.

So, again, not a smoking gun, but I feel like that particular line fits much more comfortably with ex-Mormon preconceptions than with Mormon preconceptions.

Betting on Every Horse

Let's break down the prophetic logic of verse 4:

But if they receive thee not, I will send upon them a cursing instead of a blessing.

God has just advised Joseph to go speedily to Colesville, Fayette, and Manchester, where the members of the church will support him.  

It's a little weird that a prophecy from an omniscient god contains what basically amounts to an if/then/else statement.  Doesn't God know damn well what's going to happen?  He shouldn't need to qualify his prophecies or cover his bases like this—but a charlatan would need to.  

This is God's way of saying, "Go here so those people will do a thing.  But if they don't do a thing, I'll totally punish those jerkfaced nincompoops."  That's certainly not very godlike, but it does seem like the kind of thing a false prophet may want to put in God's mouth so that he can manipulate people into doing what he wants them to do.

Indolence is Next to Godliness

Verse 9 is suspiciously convenient for a certain audacious young con artist:

And in temporal labors thou shalt not have strength, for this is not thy calling. Attend to thy calling and thou shalt have wherewith to magnify thine office, and to expound all scriptures, and continue in laying on of the hands and confirming the churches.

Joseph just had God give him permission to be intentionally unemployed because that's not his "calling." I'd almost admire the audacity if it weren't so slimy.  And lazy.

Sic 'em, God

God utterly fails to be a reliable wingman in verse 16:

And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall lay their hands upon you by violence, ye shall command to be smitten in my name; and, behold, I will smite them according to your words, in mine own due time.

This is a disconcerting clarification God adds at the end here.  If someone physically attacks you, God's got your back, but probably not right away.  But after you've been tarred and feathered and beaten to a pulp, two weeks later, in his own due time, BAM—God's gonna smite the shit outta that guy.  Bummer about the broken teeth and the cracked ribs, but Heavenly Father works on his own timeline.  

Isn't he a great deity to have in your corner?

D&C 23: Proto-Patriarchal Blessing

According to the section header, this chapter is the response to five men with an "earnest desire" to know their duties in the church.  Joseph produced this revelation glittering with gems of divine wisdom as a result.  The duties are as follows:

Oliver:  preach to the church and to the world

Hyrum:  exhort and strengthen the church

Samuel:  exhort and strengthen the church, but don't preach to the world

Joseph Sr:  exhort and strengthen the church

Joseph Knight:  pray vocally in all places, and also exhort the church

I have a feeling these men were hoping for more detailed, more personalized revelations.  All of them are supposed to preach to the church.  Samuel is the only one specifically prohibited from preaching to the world.  Joseph Knight is told to take up his cross and pray, but also to do the same things the others were told to do.

Lame.

The church is in its infancy and its eager new leaders are looking for direction on what they need to be doing because the work is so exciting and they want to be involved.  But they're merely told to preach and to help out in disappointingly non-specific terms.  And that's about it.  There isn't anything particularly groundbreaking for them in here, since I'm sure they already knew that missionary work and strengthening the church were important. 

Bafflingly, God, in his infinite wisdom (or, more accurately, in Joseph's limited imagination), chooses to reward these men's enthusiasm by giving them what amounts to somewhere between a form letter and a bad tarot reading.

D&C 22: Groggy God

This section is surprisingly dense with problems considering it's a whopping four verses.  

Holy Paradox, Batman!

It begins with what should be a blatant self-contradiction from God that might set some kind of a land speed record (verse 1):

Behold, I say unto you that all old covenants have I caused to be done away in this thing; and this is a new and an everlasting covenant, even that which was from the beginning.

Okay, read that back and tell me how it makes sense.  The old covenants are gone.  This is a new covenant, which existed previously, from the beginning.  So...it's not new then?  Or is it?

This is like the nonsense God mumbles when he wakes up in the morning and his consciousness is still struggling to separate reality from the dream it was just inhabiting.  It sounds like him, but he's not actually making sense.

Works Without Works Are Dead

Then we move on to a sideways entry into the old faith-versus-works debate that I'm not sure the current church would fully agree with:

Wherefore, although a man should be baptized an hundred times it availeth him nothing, for you cannot enter in at the strait gate by the law of Moses, neither by your dead works.

For it is because of your dead works that I have caused this last covenant and this church to be built up unto me, even as in days of old.

God refers to dead works twice here.  Nelson and Friends seem to really emphasize works, though, because they want you to keep busy being anxiously engaged—and I do mean anxiously—in a Mormon cause.  If works were really dead, why would they prescribe so many works like doing your ministering, serving in your callings, attending your presidency meetings, teaching your children the Come, Follow Me curriculum, cleaning the church, indexing names from public records, attending the temple, et cetera?  If works were really dead, wouldn't all that constitute an apostolic edict to waste your life doing things that don't really amount to anything? 

But that's not really what bothers me about this passage.  What really bothers me is that this covenant of baptism is being propped up as a solution to the fact that works are dead.  But isn't...isn't baptism just...isn't it just another work?  It's not a state of mind.  It's not a quality of building faith in oneself.  It's an outward expression of faith, sure, but it's a discrete one-time event.  It's a task to be accomplished.  It's a work.

The normal thing to debate about here is whether faith is of greater importance than works.  But God is saying that the things we do aren't going to get us into Heaven, so he's remedying the problem by giving us a required physical action to complete.  He's not saying we should focus on faith because our works are dead.  He's saying we should focus on a specific work because works are dead.

Three verses in and God still hasn't snapped out of his post-sleep stupor.

Who's in Charge Here?

But maybe God is back to his old self for the last verse:

Wherefore, enter ye in at the gate, as I have commanded, and seek not to counsel your God. Amen.

Damn, Elohim just dropped the mic.

Apparently Joseph didn't like the way some of his converts were approaching the concept of baptism.  This isn't like a driver's license, people, you can't just cross denominational lines and keep using what you came with.  You gotta take the driver's test all over again when you join this church.

I suppose counseling God on this issue would have been pretty tempting for the early Saints, though.  It seems reasonable that if you were baptized into Christianity you wouldn't think a Mormon baptism to be necessary.  But this scripture sounds like something Oaks would whip out when confronted with Ordain Women, Any Opposed, or anyone pushing for sincere acceptance of LGBT members.  It is frustrating to be in a position of authority over people who relentlessly challenge your actions.

But it would help if your actions weren't so awful.  People are less likely to question things that aren't awful—which is a lesson Joseph would learn too late, if at all.

D&C 21: All Glory to the HypnoJoe

This section is basically God telling everybody that Joseph Smith is his chosen prophet and will be responsible for some really great gospelly stuff.

There isn't much that jumps out at me here except for the audacity Joseph must have had to pen verses like these (verses 4-5):

Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me;

For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.

He's talking about himself.  He's saying, as God, that everybody needs to do whatever Joseph says.  He's writing himself a blank check and forging God's signature.

So far, a lot of the Doctrine and Covenants has involved God propping up Joseph's legitimacy.  I mean, if you think about it, God has told us that Joseph Smith is his chosen mouthpiece in the scriptures more often than he's told us not to kill and not to bear false witness and more often than he's explained the necessity of eternal marriage or denounced racism.  How strange what he chooses to focus on.

It seems to me that a real God who stresses the principle of faith wouldn't have spent so much time making sure we all knew the founder of the church was beyond reproach and acting under divine aegis.  It  also seems to me that a regular guy who was making this stuff up and was terrified people were going to catch on would be more likely to produce this kind of text.

Prophet of the Protestation

The mouthpiece of the Lord has weighed in on the current social crisis in his native country.  His Facebook post has some nice thoughts in there, but I think more than anything it shows how out of touch Russell Nelson is and how ill-equipped he is to provide any kind of meaningful leadership beyond some warm fuzzy feelings that reassure those who generally don't have a personal stake in these events.

Here's the wisdom he had to share:

Okay, let's get the good things out of the way first.  Yes, it's good that he is denouncing racism, prejudice, and violence.  It's good that he's advocating for building bridges and respecting human life.  But these are things you don't need to be a prophet to say.  These, really, should be a kind of bare minimum response from anyone.  It's the stuff other than the bare minimum that moves into troubling territory.

"Deeply Saddened"

I realize he's trying to express sympathy and all, but "saddened" is such a passive thing to say.  Where's the outrage?  I grew up learning in history classes that racism was a thing because of slavery but that Nelson's generation fixed it when they ended segregation.  Racism has clearly not been fixed.  You're telling me that people are still dying because of a problem that we pat ourselves on the back for resolving sixty years ago and you're not pissed?  

If you're a bystander on the street when someone's sedan gets T-boned by a tractor trailer and the driver is trapped in their own burning car, do you watch them die while remarking to the other bystanders that you're "deeply saddened" by these events?  Call an ambulance, try to pull the person out of the car, help direct traffic or something.

"Recent Evidences"

The use of the word "evidences" makes me think he's trying to delay his use of the word "racism" or trying to water down its severity.  What about about the recently publicized deaths of black people and the surrounding traditional media coverage and the ensuing social media frenzy doesn't scream racism?  Sure, there are plenty of "evidences" of racism, but I'm concerned that he's not necessarily treating them as facts.  He abhors the reality that some would—hypothetically—deny others respect and freedom on the basis of the color of their skin, but what he's not saying is "look what they actually did to George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless others."

That's weak.  This is not something that will benefit from wishy-washy language.  It's a slight consolation, at least, that the next comment about "assaults on human dignity" comes off as much stronger.

"Repent!"

Nelson then moves on to explaining that God doesn't want us to harbor prejudices against any group of his children. That rings kind of hollow considering how church policies, church doctrine, church leaders, and church culture continues to treat LGBTQ people, for example.  Nelson then calls us to repentance if we have any prejudices toward another race.

Notice he doesn't call us to repentance for harboring prejudices toward another gender or another sexual orientation.  I mean, that's really not at issue here anyway, so it would be kind of weird if he brought it up, but that doesn't mean the hypocrisy isn't there.

Somebody needs to call Nelson to repentance for his organization's homophobia and transphobia and misogyny and unabashed past racism while he's calling us to repentance for our current racial prejudices.

"Fairness For All"

While wrapping up a short paragraph containing more of the hypocrisy I cited above, Nelson says that his church believes in freedom, kindness, and fairness for all of God's children.  I don't think it's coincidence that he happened to include the "Fairness for All" catchphrase associated with the church's belief that LGBTQ freedoms threaten religious freedoms.

Remember when I said it would be weird if he brought up LGBTQ issues in a Facebook post about systemic racial injustice?  I guess I spoke to soon.  He did bring it up, albiet obliquely, and it's definitely weird.  Way to have a chip on your shoulder about something, dude.  

There are plenty of crucial causes for the LGBTQ community and I understand why there are also some concerns about religious freedom, but that's not what this is about.  Slipping a slogan for your pet political movement into a post that's about respecting people's rights regardless of their skin color is kind of a sleazy thing to do. 

"Bond And Free"

Okay, so we're talking about some injustices being perpetrated on a group of people who were historically enslaved and the best scripture Nelson can find to support his claim that God wants us to treat each other as equals is a verse that invites "black and white, bond and free, male and female" to come unto Christ?  This is a verse in which the Mormon god specifically mentions slavery and fails to condemn it.  That's not really a great way to reassure people that your god is the good guy.

Nelson is the prophet and he's supposed to have the capability to speak new scripture.  He shouldn't need to cite previous canon like he's writing a term paper.  He should just be able to say, as God's chosen representative, that God invites everyone to come unto him.  I think he was going for something that included the phrase "black and white" so that he could indicate a scripturally prescribed community of racial inclusion, but the "bond and free" comment is troubling because it implies that God doesn't necessarily disapprove of the practice to which today's oppression of African-Americans can trace its genesis.

And even if he had to quote scripture, he could have at least picked a less problematic snippet of that particular passage.  This is the same verse that mentions that God "denieth none that come unto him" and says that "all are alike unto God".

"Spheres of Influence"

Points for unironically using the word "behoove," Rusty.  That took some serious guts.  

While I agree that it does behoove us to encourage positive changes in our spheres of influence, I think he's missing the point again.  The outrage behind these protests and riots—the way I see it, at least—stems from the fact that merely massaging and molding the opinions within our spheres of influence hasn't worked.  If black people are being targeted and incarcerated and killed and oppressed by the justice system around the country, it's because the justice system has not permitted black people's spheres of influence to expand.  You can't use a power that's been withheld from you.

The justice system has its hands over its ears and Nelson is telling us that we should calmly tell them what needs to change.  At the risk of speaking on behalf of people whose suffering I have never experienced, I'm betting the black community is growing tired of speaking calmly and not being listened to.  Nelson is telling them and the people who support them to stop shouting.  But if nobody's shouting, how is the person covering their ears going to hear what desperately needs to be heard?   

"Influence" is another fence-sitting, passive word.  Influencing the people within our spheres is good, but I think the last few centuries of civil rights violations has demonstrated that influencing is not going to get the job done quickly enough.  And this really is not the kind of thing that anyone deserves to sit around waiting for a resolution on.  And people have been waiting for literal generations.

Which brings me to my next point...

"Illegal Acts"

Yes, looting is bad.  Yes, destroying someone else's property is bad.  And I'm sure there are some opportunists in the crowd who are capitalizing on the chaos.  But if you really can't understand why there's so much indignation and frustration and rage and if you really can't understand why those emotions can erupt into violence when they're met with lines of police in riot gear using tear gas and rubber bullets and pepper spray, I worry that you're not really trying hard enough to understand the nature of the struggle.

I get that violence is bad.  But it's not like one guy died and now the country's going berserk.  These latest killings are part of a long string of injustices going back generations.  Sure, maybe these deaths are less brutal than what was done to Emmett Till.  But if the best we can say is that the racially-motivated murders are slightly less horrific than what used to happen 65 years ago, the progress has been glacial.  Glacial progress toward a solution while people are literally dying from the problem is unacceptable.  Of course it is.  And I can't imagine what it must feel like to be someone who has to wait for the progress to inch forward toward a time when they can feel properly safe in their own community.

And that's why I'm trying not to judge people for the anger and the violence and the looting.  The anger is legitimate and repeated calls for these issues to be corrected within our culture have made such little progress over such an extended period of time.  At a certain point, if you're fighting for something this important for this long and you still haven't been heard, I can understand why maybe breaking some windows and setting some fires feels like one of the best of your limited remaining options.

Nelson says these things "cannot be tolerated."  I agree that they're not good things, but his stern wording that's roughly equal to the sternness he used when he described his abhorrence of racism makes me think he's not really trying to understand.  He just wants people to stop rioting so everyone feels safe.  What he doesn't seem to grasp is that people are rioting because of so many who already didn't feel safe under "normal" conditions.

"Moral Compass"

Who is this directed at?  Who is he advising to cultivate a moral compass?  The police?  The protesters?  The counter-protesters?  It's disappointing—though not surprising—how carefully he tries to avoid taking a specific side.  The church, apparently, will muscle in and let everybody knows exactly how it feels and whose side it's on when we're talking about gay marriage, but when we're talking about people of color being killed, I guess the church can't be bothered to say something as straightforward as, for example, "Black Lives Matter" or "we need to eradicate the racism that is embedded in our justice system and in our culture."

Just get yourself a moral compass, everybody, and play nice, okay?

"More Evil"

It just blows my mind that someone who was alive during World War II can make the statement "evil has never been resolved by more evil."  Probably he just hasn't considered this, but the way this statement breaks down for me is that it's only true if Hitler wasn't evil, if World War II didn't resolve Hitler's evils, or if war is not an evil.  

I think war is evil, although I can understand why it is sometimes a tragically necessary evil.  I think the violent resistance to the Axis Powers is perhaps one of the most historically prominent examples of that.  I don't mean to compare the soldiers who stormed Normandy beach with people setting fires in Minneapolis, of course, but I think it's an important example to illustrate that Nelson is wrong in his approach to the situation and that his thoughts on the subject are half-formed.

Plus, there are numerous scriptural examples of evil deeds supposedly resolving evil.  Nephi cut off Laban's head to get the brass plates.  Ammon cut off the arms of the thieves to defend King Lamoni's sheep.  Alma and Amulek allowed the Ammonihahites to burn so their deaths would condemn the chief judge.  And pretty much anything Captain Moroni ever did was evil but was nonetheless portrayed as a positive accomplishment.  With all the noble bloodshed in the Book of Mormon as a contrast, the rioters in present-day America are admirably well-behaved.

"Color, Creed, or Cause"

Here Nelson is working in references to religious discrimination again.  While he's correct that we should foster fundamental respect between everyone regardless of color, creed, or cause, it needs to be pointed out that only colors and causes are really at issue right now.  If Nelson wanted to have a third thing that preserved his alliteration, he should have picked something else that didn't make it sound like he still thinks this is all about his own interests.

And I think that's why his exhortation that we all work tirelessly to build bridges of understanding doesn't actually do much to build those bridges.  He's fundamentally failing to examine these events from anyone's perspective other than his own.  And even though I don't think Nelson is a white supremacist or anything like that, his passivity is helping perpetuate the things he's denouncing.  He probably means well, but he's advocating the same glacial pace of progress that has given way to this bubbling up of anger and frustration and violence.

This is a toothless, sanitized, carefully non-committal statement with plenty of head-nods toward the moral high ground but with an overwhelming emphasis on the warm, mossy valley of the status quo.  I think he means well, but the status quo is the problem.

We should expect more from a prophet.

Even though the church has trailed behind the American zeitgeist in many social issues—interracial marriage, LGBTQ rights, feminism, even polygamy—this seems like an obvious opportunity for a prophet to at least give the appearance of leading the charge.  He could encourage his followers to protest peacefully, to vote for candidates who will combat systemic racism, to donate to charities that support people of color.  He could even call for a special fast for relief from racial violence, or for legislators to be moved upon by the Spirit to enact laws that will provide protections from these tragedies and address the injustices codified in US law, or that the hearts of police officers will be softened so that they will be slow to violence.  But instead, what do we get from the mouthpiece of the Lord in the latter days?    A press release of platitudes.

Mormonism's founding book of scripture is filled with stories of prophets who valiantly stood for what they knew to be right, spoke truth to power, and disregarded their personal comfort and safety in pursuit of a higher moral purpose.  Ammon preached the gospel dauntlessly to King Lamoni, Alma fled an oppressive regime to start the church in secret, Samuel the Lamanite called a city to repentance while they shot arrows at him, and Abinadi risked and lost his life rebuking King Noah and his wicked priests.  And if we need a scriptural precedent for resisting a flawed criminal justice system, even one of the Nephis talked back with some fiery words when he was falsely arrested for murder (Helaman 9).

How many of those bold characteristics are being exhibited by the man who claims to be the modern-day equivalent of those scriptural figures?

We should expect more from a true prophet.