1 Nephi 15: A Character Study

In this chapter, Nephi explains life, the universe and everything (or maybe just the tree of life, the future of the world, and Lehi's vision) to his older brothers, Laman and Lemuel.  Some of it is repeated information from the last few chapters, and I think that gives me a good enough excuse to ignore all that stuff for now and just focus on Laman and Lemuel.  Laman and Lemuel make no sense whatsoever. Let me explain why.

First, they have no identity from each other.  We know Laman is the older of the two.  That's about it.  They seem to act mostly (but not always) as a single unit.  They change their minds about whether or not they believe the religious preaching of Lehi and Nephi at the same times.  They abuse or attempt to kill their brother at the same times.  Not once does Lemuel tie Nephi up and Laman plead for his release.  They act in unison.  They probably braided each other's hair too.

Second, I have never met a single person who is quite so fickle as these two clowns are.  Let's run through their waffling so far:

1. Laman and Lemuel beat up Sam and Nephi for nearly getting everyone killed trying to get the plates from Laban.
2. A freaking angel of God appears and tells them to cut it out.  They cut it out.
3. After retrieving Ishmael's family from Jerusalem, Laman and Lemuel rebel against Nephi and tie him up with the intent of leaving him to die.
4. After Nephi escapes his bonds, Laman and Lemuel are apologetic and even go so far as to pray to God for forgiveness.

They change their minds all the time.  And when they do, Nephi usually swears by it.  He calls them "humbled" or something to indicate that, yeah, that sudden conversion was for real.  Even though they were murderously angry a few verses ago, now they're true-believers.

Their waffling continues when, in chapter 15, Laman and Lemuel say they haven't prayed for understanding of Lehi's dream because God doesn't talk to them.  Nephi then goes off on a rant about how hardhearted they are and apparently he explained just about everything to them.  Their response?

These two guys who have beaten Nephi up, tried to kill him, and will later try to kill him again, start asking questions about Lehi's vision.  And not just basic questions like "What does the iron rod represent?"  They ask perceptive questions, too, such as verse 31, which is along the lines of:  "You said the chasm between the righteous and the wicked represents hell...does that refer to temporal suffering in this life or does it refer to the suffering of the soul after death?"

That's kind of weird.  They're asking detailed doctrinal questions like that when their only apparent motives so far have been:

1. Stay in Jerusalem because home is awesome.
2. Don't get killed.
3. Get Nephi to shut the hell up.

They don't care about their dad's visions or their uppity younger brother's soapbox.  They don't think Jerusalem is going to be destroyed and they don't want to wander around in the desert for years.  Considering their desires and concerns are almost entirely about whether they'll be able to chill at home not giving a crap about anything, why would we believe that these two are busting out with the Sunday-School-discussion-generating questions?

So, to summarize:  Laman and Lemuel are interchangeable, unrealistically fickle, and do things that aren't supported by any of their motivations.  That, to me, is plenty of support for the theory that they are not, in fact, historical figures.  They are poorly written one-dimensional fictional characters.

Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration

For kicks, I decided to pass the time during my lazy, uneventful day off by watching Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration, a church-sponsored film about the life of Joseph Smith.  I found it on YouTube, split into five pieces, each with a description of the video containing a claim that it was a "documentary film."  And as I watched, I noticed lots of things that seemed...wrong.

President Thomas S. Orwell?

I stumbled across this issue while browsing this thread over at the ExMormon.org message boards.

Apparently, the LDS church is denying the doctrine of eternal progression.  It claims that the belief that when we are given salvation in the celestial kingdom of heaven we become gods and rule over our own spirit children and our own planets is a "misunderstanding" that is "misrepresented by those who caricature the faith."

Wait, what?

1 Nephi 14: So Much Logic

Chapter 14 continues, unsurprisingly, with Nephi's vision. He still has an angel on his shoulder to direct his attention and explain what he sees.

Us versus Them
Among the things the angel tells Nephi about the world after the Gentiles come in and take over the land of Nephi's descendants is this little gem (verse 10):

Behold, there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.

So despite what many LDS members will tell you about how lots of churches are good because they have some truth but Mormonism is the only true church because it has all the truth, their own book of scripture dictates otherwise: If you're not in God's true church, you're in the abominable church. You know, the one that's the whore of all the earth and stuff.

This verse also helps bolster the church's sense of superiority and its unspoken but pervasive "us versus them" mentality...the mentality in which the word "them" means "the entire world."


Joseph Smith: A Master of Textual Efficiency
Nephi wants us to believe that his vision was so sweeping, so comprehensive, so intense and so freaking epic that it included much more than what he could describe in three chapters. So he makes the comment that he would have written more, except that part of his vision included John, who was the one who was supposed to write the parts about the end of the world. I find two things about this amusing.

1. The angel says that when John wrote his books, they were "plain and pure" and "easy to the understanding of all men." This appears to be an acknowledgement to claims made in the previous chapter (amid the madness of the Chiasmic Chaos) that early agents of the great and abominable church had altered the Bible and taken out many important doctrines (I mean...plain and precious truths). Which means that the angel is telling Nephi not to write down what he's seeing because someone else will write it down, only for it to be changed so that nobody can understand it. What's the point of that? The Book of Mormon purports itself as another testament of Jesus Christ, untainted by man's meddling, containing correct doctrine. Why not have Nephi write this stuff down so that when the Book of Mormon is revealed it can clarify some of the confusing things found in the sabotaged books of John?

2. If it wasn't necessary for Nephi to make a record of the entirety of his vision because someone else would cover that subject, why didn't that stop Nephi from quoting huge chunks of Isaiah later on? Why, when Mormon was abridging centuries of religious texts into one record for Joseph Smith to discover, was he not prevented from repeating the Sermon on the Mount in the book of Third Nephi? Somebody already wrote that stuff down!

Good job, Joseph. In one chapter, you've made Nephi, an angel, and God all look like idiots. Unless, of course, you just made the whole thing up.

Taxes and Missionaries

I was talking with my family tonight about tax season.  My sister had finally decided to get her taxes done professionally, because for the first time in her life, she'd had a very complicated year as far as taxes go.  She'd gotten married and her husband recently quit his job in another state and started his own business in this state, and the whole thing was confusing enough that she figured it might be better to have a professional sort it all out for her.

My dad said that he'd heard that a nearby university was offering its accounting students as volunteers to give people free advice about filing their tax returns.  He chuckled and said, "I'd rather pay for a professional to do it than take the advice of some 20-year-old kid who's halfway through his accounting program!"

My immediate thought (which I did not share with my Mormon family) was, "So...why do you support the church's missionary program then?"

The point of his comment was, of course, that you shouldn't put your trust in someone who's not completely qualified, especially someone young and inexperienced.  But as a bishop and a stake president, my dad has sent dozens of missionaries out into the field.  Missionaries who teach about the plan of happiness and eternal marriage...but who've never been married themselves.  How could they be considered qualified to preach about sacred ordinances if they haven't quite achieved all of them?

Nineteen years old is a horrible time to send out a missionary.  This is the time when most kids are adjusting to life after high school, discovering their identities, and seeing the real world outside of their parents' direct care and protection.  But the church plucks these kids up and sends them out to preach to the world before they've really had a chance to experience the world.  And instead of discovering their identities, the missionaries discover the church and substitute it for an identity.  I'm sure most missionaries--especially the ones that were born and raised in the church--have little understanding of the struggles some of their investigators have, but they boldly go door to door proclaiming that they have the solutions.

If you won't trust your tax return to a partially-trained 20-year-old, why would you trust your eternal salvation to a partially-trained 20-year-old?  Mormonism expects you to.

And that doesn't seem right to me.