Moroni 7: Contradictation

Moroni now shares an old sermon from his father's journal of discourses.  Apparently there was a time during poor Mormons's tumultuous existence when there were actually enough righteous people among the Nephites that he had a church to preach in and a congregation to preach to.  Apparently he had one good week in there between all the war and wickedness.

Say It Ain't Not Isn't Not Not So
Early in his address, Mormon alludes to a classic teaching of Christ (verse
5):

For I remember the word of God which saith by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also.

And then he goes on to confusingly deconstruct—or maybe enhance?—this Sermon on the Mount reference.  He basically says that even though you can tell if someone's good by seeing their good works, you may need to redefine good.  And works.  Or maybe know.

For behold, God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good; for if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing. 

For behold, it is not counted unto him for righteousness. 

For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God. 

And likewise also is it counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such. 

Wherefore, a man being evil cannot do that which is good; neither will he give a good gift.

Seriously, what's the point in saying you can know someone by their works if you have to clarify that works can look good but not actually be good depending on the doer's disposition and therefore won't count as righteousness only you can't know that because it's due to internal intent instead of the face value of the act itself no matter how pious it may seem because even though the work itself was good it actually wasn't because—

See what I mean?  I'm not a believer in Jesus, so normally I'm fine disagreeing with the Bible.  And normally I'd say that Jesus's version is a bit naive.  But Mormon looks like such an idiot trying to piggyback on Jesus while actually contradicting him that I kind of want to side with Jesus on principle.  "By their fruits shall ye know them" may be naive, but at least it's pithy, memorable, and...you know...not rife with internally contradictory hogwash.

Mormon is an Idiot

This chapter is starting to make me angry (verses 16-17):

For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. 

But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him.

Like it's really that friggin' easy! If it were that dead simple there would be a lot less evil in the world. One of the many problems with this concept is...how do you define evil in the convoluted moral calculus that plagues even the most ordinary person? Obviously building a homeless shelter is good and slaughtering your family is bad. But the overwhelming majority of human decisions are far more complex. Lying is bad. Being mean is bad. Do you tell someone the truth if it will cause hurt feelings? Mormon's perfect solution can't even provide a good answer to a relatively simple problem that every single person in the history of everything has faced. What use is it if the obvious questions are easy and the slightly more nuanced questions are impossible?

It's also kind of weird that the Book of Mormon refers to the devil's followers as "his angels."  That makes the Mormon mythology murkier.  What the hell is an angel then, anyway?  According to the LDS Bible dictionary they're messengers of God.  Except when they're not, because this entry also alludes to "the devil's angels," and then gives a few references to the possibly-incorrectly-translated Bible.  It doesn't mention that the devil's angels show up here in the good ol' Book of Mormon, perhaps because you'd think the most correct book that had been translated by the power of God would be able to keep its doctrinal terminology straight.  This is hardly something that's essential to our salvation, but it sure fits well with the theory that Joseph Smith was making this stuff up.

Angels Among Us
Slightly less infuriating, but maybe enough for a groan and an eye roll, is Mormon's clearly outdated teaching about miracles and angels (verses 29 and 30):

And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have angels ceased to minister unto the children of men. 

For behold, they are subject unto him, to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of godliness.

According to the church-approved narrative of Joseph Smith's life, verse 29 contains a question that Mormonism is uniquely suited to answer. The church is supposed to be proud that miracles and revelation continue in the modern day just like with prophets of old. Except that scriptural-style miracles don't happen anymore. There are no unending loaves and fishes, there are no resurrections of dead friends, there are no missionaries delivered from captivity by dark smoke and loud voices. There are some arguably apocryphal anecdotes from early church history, but miracles—as most people think of them—have ceased...at least where Mormonism is concerned.

Apostles don't directly claim to speak with God and they don't claim to have been visited by angels. According to Mormon, as long as these prophets are firm in the faith, there isn't really an explanation for why angels don't appear to them—or to other worthy church members. And this is kind of insulting, considering that Alma the Younger, Laman and Lemuel, and Saul of Tarsus were given angelic visitation despite clearly not meeting Mormon's godliness requirements.

What's the point in teaching something in the scriptures if it's not actually going to work out that way? What's worse is the way the next verse begins:

And the office of their ministry is to call men unto repentance...

So they show themselves to those who are firm in the faith and those who need to be called to repentance? What about the rest of us? What about the middle of the spectrum, where people struggle with what they believe and pray for signs and answers? What kind of sense does this angel policy make, and why does it not seem to apply anymore?  Verse 37 answers part of that question:

...and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men; wherefore, if these things have ceased wo be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief, and all is vain.

This makes no sense! If angels appear by faith, how were they calling faithless scriptural apostates to repentance? And it's obnoxious the way this chapter tries to cover its bases. The past few verses basically boil down to "Of course miracles haven't ceased! Oh, but just in case they have, here's probably why—it's your own fault." How quintessentially Mormon of Mormon.


Faith Hope Love
Remember when the Star Wars prequels came out and we were all disappointed with, among other things, Yoda's terrible dialogue? Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering? Except that it isn't as wise as it initially sounded because the ordering of all these terms can be scrambled and it still makes the same amount of sense? Well, Mormon is about to pull a Yoda and crank the dial up to eleven. Verses 38 through 47 is his convoluted masterpiece of solemn-sounding nonsense.  I'll summarize to save you some time:

You can't be saved without faith. You can't attain faith without hope. But without faith there can be no hope. You can have neither faith nor hope without meekness. If you don't have meekness then your faith and hope are not acceptable to God. If you're going to be meek and faithful, you'll need to have charity. Without charity, you are nothing.

Wouldn't it have been simpler and less contradictory to just skip right to the preaching about charity? Because this is really just a pointless moebius strip of semantic self-indulgence.

Moroni 6: Idealized Flashback

Moroni continues explaining how things were way back when the Nephites were still basking in the post-Messianic-visitation afterglow.

Tear 'em Down to Build 'em Up
Verse 2 paints an interesting vision of the baptismal ordinance that doesn't exactly jive with the present-day Mormon version:

Neither did they receive any unto baptism save they came forth with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and witnessed unto the church that they truly repented of all their sins.

I can absolutely guarantee that when I was baptized I had neither a broken heart nor a contrite spirit.  It was a rite of passage.  I was excited, not heartbroken.  I had a proud spirit, not a contrite one, because I was doing what my family and my ward leaders wanted me to do.  I was eight and had yet to really commit serious sin, but I don't recall any public affirmation I had to make detailing the renouncing of my iniquitous ways. 

With the church's continuing obsession with growth, this scriptural teaching has almost definitely fallen by the wayside.  Missionary discussions push for baptismal commitments so early on that there's no way the elders have time to really assess the brokenness of an investigator's heart or the contriteness of an investigator's spirit.  The numbers-driven mission culture has resulted in Japanese "baseball baptisms" and South American "soccer baptisms."  The church is not following the pattern set forth in scripture by the Mormonism the Nephites observed immediately after Jesus Christ appeared to them.

Plus I don't love the concept of a convert needing to be broken down to a piteously devastated level—I mean brokenheartedly contrite level—to be worthy of God's saving ordinances...buuuuut that's a different discussion.

Pharisaical Paradise
A possible precursor to today's courts of love crops up in verse 7:

And they were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them; and whoso was found to commit iniquity, and three witnesses of the church did condemn them before the elders, and if they repented not, and confessed not, their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ.

Does that not sound eerily like "every member a thought policeman" or what?  And it seems to imply excommunication, which I despise.  It seems that the Nephites were even more liberal with the spiritual guillotine than the Monsonites are, because all it took was an unregenerate member with three people willing to tattle.

But another difference here between ancient and modern churches is less flattering to today's Mormonism.  I'm not sure it's fair to say that the LDS church is so strident in its opposition to iniquity as its predecessor.  Financial fraud, sexual predation, and other forms of abuse are far too common in the church and far too poorly penalized.  If the church were following the example of this short-lived Nephite utopia, excommunications would be more common and they would be applied more commonly to damaging, traumatizing, and predatory iniquity than to any threats posed by doubt or homosexuality.

View of View of the Hebrews

I got curious browsing around Amazon a few weeks ago and wound up ordering a copy of View of the Hebrews by Ethan Smith.  I'd read in a few places, including the CES Letter, that this book was evidence that the Book of Mormon was fictional to the point of plagiarism.  I was kind of disappointed.  I don't think that accusation really holds up.

There is a comparison chart attributed to B. H. Roberts in the CES Letter that delineates the similarities between these two early 19th century publications.  It seems like a generally accurate chart, but there are a lot of points that aren't particularly damning.  And some are too vague, like "settlers journey northward" and "religion a motivating factor."  Settlers travel north all the time in history and in fiction and religion is a common factor in a lot of people's motivations.  The Samuel the Lamanite connection is the most compelling, I believe, but even that is introduced very early and you're still left with more than a hundred pages of material that can be interpreted as having flimsy correlations to the Book of Mormon.

I don't think it's useful to adduce View of the Hebrews when arguing that the Book of Mormon is a fraud.  I think it's very weak evidence.  It fits the narrative that I believe since I've already concluded that the Book of Mormon is not scripture, but it's not strong enough to convince anyone who still follows the prophet.  It's not definitive enough or conclusive enough.  It's one of the arguments that FAIR pounced on most voraciously in their response to the CES Letter, and it's probably because they were excited to have something that could be dismissed with relatively little effort.

View of the Hebrews has one major evidence that may help convince a Mormon who's already begun questioning and researching, though.  It pretty exhaustively indicates that the idea of Native Americans being descendants of ancient Jews was not new in the 19th century.  It always seemed groundbreaking to me when I was a faithful church member because I grew up in an era in which a different origin for Native Americans was almost universally agreed upon as fact.  But back in Joseph Smith's day, the Hebrew-Indian thing was a theory with some popularity.  Fawn Brodie mentioned this in passing in No Man Knows My History, but Ethan Smith's book was written with the sole intent of proving that theory.  He cited numerous other contemporary scholars and thinkers in support of his thesis.  The existence of View of the Hebrews and the breadth of work it references to bolster its claims should at least take some of the shine off the Book of Mormon's mystique.  But again, it only really points to Joseph Smith penning a fictional history if you're already leaning that direction.  It seems easy to minimize or discredit if you still believe the truth claims of the LDS church.  It's not the smoking gun of plagiarism it's sometimes depicted as.

It's a weird read, too.  Very racist to a modern eye.  It's very dry to a modern eye, too, as the prose hasn't aged well.  But it's interesting nonetheless.  The Late War is a totally different story.  I couldn't stomach more than a few chapters of that before giving up.

Moroni 5: Bless and Sanctify 2

...and then we have a separate chapter for the blessing on the wine.  I realize this is not a chapter break that was included in the original 1830 Book of Mormon, so it isn't a criticism of the book's legitimacy.  But it sure is a weird editing decision from somewhere down the line.

The slight differences between the two sacrament prayers are curious.  It's odd that we're making sure that we remember Christ and that we keep the Spirit with us in both but that we promise to keep the commandments and take his name upon us only when partaking of the bread. What I think is even stranger is that the reason for the symbolism is explained immediately in the blessing on the wine.  It represents the blood of Christ, which was shed for us.  But in the previous prayer, we mention that the bread represents the body of Christ and we roll right into what we're doing by partaking of it.

Why is Christ's body important?  Why is it important to attach a symbolic significance to the wine but leave us guessing about the bread?

It also used to bother me, just slightly, that the wording of these two prayers is a little inconsistent. In the blessing on the bread, it says, "that they may eat in remembrance of," and in the blessing on the wine, it's, "that they may do it in remembrance of."  Seems like it should be drink instead of do it.  For such an important pair of prayers, I always felt that there should be a solemner, holier symmetry to them.   

Moroni 4: Bless and Sanctify

Moroni offhandedly mentions yet another thing that Christ explicitly commanded when he visited the Americas that somehow did not merit a mention in 3 Nephi.  This time it's the sacrament prayer.  And that's kind of ironic, considering that we agree to keep the commandments in that prayer—but when we're commanded to administer the sacrament in a specific way, we almost forget to preserve that method for future generations.

But what really caught my eye about this chapter this time around was the specific phrasing.  The pronouns make me wonder if this is still a leftover of the mostly Trinitarian attitude of the original Book of Mormon.  Look at verse 3:

O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it; that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he hath given them, that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.

So we're speaking directly to God the Father the whole time, which means whenever the words him or his are used, it's a reference to Jesus.  Which means that the commandments we're supposed to keep are Jesus's commandments.  Usually, commandments are attributed to God the Father—at least in Mormonism. But it also means that when we'll have his Spirit to be with us, it's Jesus's spirit.  And I don't ever remember the Holy Ghost being taught as belonging to the Son.  It always belongs to the Father.  The spirit of God like a fire is burning...not the spirit of Jesus.

So perhaps this verse was written with the whole Father-and-Son-are-still-kind-of-the-same-guy mindset, which makes it all the more bizarre that it winds up being one of the things that is repeated most often, most officially, and most stringently in modern-day Mormonism.