Every blessing we have is predicated upon a law. You break the law, the blessing is gone.

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. (D&C 130: 20-21)²

One must be intelligent not to confuse administrative actions with the Gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e. truth) in its purest mode. There is a different between administration of earthly issues, the Truth of the Gospel, and, and what I call the “Doctrine of the Culture,” that some people cling to instead of the doctrine.

As a Mormon, I struggled with the legalistic LDS belief that all blessings a person receives from God are actually dependent upon his or her obedience to a specific Law (or body of Laws) of Heaven.  The reason I struggled is that I could never pin down exactly what the Law was, despite the fact that I was desperate to follow it.  (That seems to be a common theme in the LDS Church.) I studied the teachings of Mormon prophets over the 150+ year life of the LDS Church and found that certain Laws (or doctrines) they emphasized as “eternal” and “fundamental” to God’s plan for humanity had changed over time.  This was very distressing to me, as I had been taught my whole life that God’s Laws are eternal and unchanging, because they are based on Truth, which is eternal.  I was taught that the doctrines of Mormonism embody the sum of those unchanging Laws.  Clearly, however, doctrines had been changing and evolving the whole time.³

Once I realized this was the case, the contradiction between reality and what I had been taught and always believed about the LDS Church caused me to lose much of my confidence in the Church as the one true organization of God on Earth. I tried to figure out ways to reconcile the contradictions, trying to make distinctions between them that allowed both to be true at the same time.  My mind was working in ways similar to Deep Throat above, conceptually separating “doctrine” and “Truth” from “Mormon culture” and “folklore” in an effort to define the consistent Laws in LDS teachings upon which all blessings are predicated.⁴  Despite my best efforts, I was largely unsuccessful at convincing myself that the contradictions weren’t really contradictions, and that there was a consistent Law of the Gospel buried in Mormon beliefs.

When the believers in my family learned of my confusion, they pulled all of the strings they could to get me some help.  They put me in contact with Max Anderson, an LDS apologist, who had published a book defending mainstream LDS beliefs by deconstructing Mormon Fundamentalist claims to divine authority.  Max and his wife were very kind to me, and they had me over to their house on several occasions to sit in their living room and talk through my concerns.  A few times, Max invited other apologists to join us and discuss issues they had researched.  These meetings presented me with various ways of parsing the contradictions so that they made more sense.

One meeting in particular really blew my mind.  At that meeting, Eldon Watson, who had compiled a book of Brigham Young’s writings, attempted the mindbending feat of explaining how everything Brigham Young taught is in harmony with mainstream LDS beliefs about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I was flabbergasted to learn that what made it all fit together for him was to draw a distinction between “LDS doctrine” and ”Truth”.  The key, he explained, is to understand that Truth is eternal and unchanging, but LDS doctrine is only an expression of the Church’s acknowledged beliefs at a specific moment in time.  Thus, LDS doctrine when Brigham Young was alive included polygamy as a requirement to get into the highest part of heaven, but current LDS doctrine does not.

This idea was shocking to me because, despite its (semi)effectiveness as a logical solution to the problem of contradiction in authoritative LDS teachings, the concept is clearly heretical.  All LDS Church leaders I know of, and regular members alike, have talked about LDS doctrine as embodying “the fullness of the Gospel”.  Any past changes have been carefully characterized as adding more previously unrevealed Truth to the doctrine, because Truth is what LDS doctrine is all about.  Watson was explaining that doctrine freely changes with the needs of the Church at the given moment–things that are Truth, like the divine nature of polygamy, can be taken out and disavowed.

I’m pretty sure that Watson, in offering up his idea, was mainly just trying to accommodate the fact that Church President Gordon B. Hinckley had recently blurted out, on international television, that polygamy is not doctrinal⁵ when it had clearly been doctrinal (though not always practiced) during the previous 100+ years of LDS Church existence.  I think, however, that drawing a distinction between doctrine and Truth is just an apologetic invention, and has never been part of Church teachings. As far as I know, President Brigham Young never made that distinction, and Apostle Boyd K. Packer (currently the next in line to be President of the Church) doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo either, because he has taught that Some things cannot be changed. Doctrine cannot be changed. And understandably so.  Malleable doctrine undermines the authority of Church leaders, because it means that at least sometimes what they teach is not the real Truth, and therefore need not be obeyed.  This is also the reason why Mormons almost never admit (with any specificity) that Church leaders make mistakes.  Changing doctrine is just a slow-motion mistake.

Funny, though, because now that I have apostatized, I agree with Elden Watson.

-PWM

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1. Yeah, the irony of an apparently straight-laced Mormon naming him or herself Deep Throat hasn’t escaped me.  I assume the name is referring somehow to the Watergate informant, rather than the classic porn movie from which the informant’s pseudonym was derived.  Then again, either reference is kind of random.
2. By the way, this section of the Doctrine & Covenants (which is LDS scripture on par with the Bible or the Book of Mormon) is a treasure trove of canonized Mormon oddities, like Joseph Smith’s unfulfilled prediction about growing unrest in the American South (that eventually developed into the Civil War) being a precursor to the second coming of Jesus Christ, his cautiously hedged prediction that Jesus Christ’s second coming would happen prior to his 85th birthday (1890), his explanation for why the Holy Ghost is incorporeal, his insight into the planets that God and the angels live on, his view of what the afterlife is generally like, and other fun stuff.  Definitely worth a read, since these things are part of the “meat” of the Gospel that Mormons don’t share with outsiders very often (the “milk” always comes first).
3. For example, the importance of polygamy in attaining the highest glory in the Celestial Kingdom, the meaning and importance of Doctrine & Covenants 89 (the “Word of Wisdom”), the role of Blood Atonement in the Gospel, the meaning and importance of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, the role of seer stones and other implements of folk magic in the Gospel, the role and meaning of race in determining worthiness to hold the Priesthood, the ancestral origins of the American Indians, the location of lands and people featured in Book of Mormon, the eternal and unchanging nature of LDS temple ceremonies and other Priesthood ordinances, etc.
4. I never went as far as Deep Throat has, however, in making distinctions between “administration of earthly issues” and “the Gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e. truth) in its purest mode”, probably because that contradicts the basic Mormon belief that God doesn’t give any exclusively “earthly” rules–they are all applicable to spiritual matters (see D& C 29:34-35).
5. Larry King: You condemn it [polygamy].

   Gordon B. Hinckley: I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.

   –1998 Larry King interview of Gordon B. Hinckley, prophet and President of the LDS Church

This seems like a neat and tidy way to avoid conflicts between science and religion–just treat the religious view as a divinely-inspired metaphor only.
The strategy carries forward to other events described in the Bible that conflict with science (e.g., Noah’s Ark (and the flood) , or even the Exodus). Once science has persuaded you that the events probably didn’t actually happen the way the Bible says (and perhaps you were taught to believe), you simply thank science and conclude that they’re just metaphors.

It’s actually easy for a Mormon to do this with the Bible, because Mormons believe the Bible to be the word of God only to the extent that it has been translated correctly, and the current version of the Bible is missing many “plain and precious things” that were removed or otherwise corrupted since the books were first written. In the mainstream LDS view, the Bible is already a potential minefield of half-truths and uninspired poetry, so relabeling seemingly literal elements as metaphorical in light of new scientific knowledge is no big deal.

But what about taking that same approach with the Book of Mormon?

Such an approach is rarely seen in the LDS Church, if ever. Joseph Smith once said that the Book of Mormon is “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion.” That quote is proudly printed in the introduction of every copy of the Book of Mormon published by the LDS Church, as is the following challenge to the world: “We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true.” Now, as a Mormon with those sweeping declarations ringing in your ears and permeating your concept of the religion, which Book of Mormon stories are you going to declare to be not literally true? I didn’t think so.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that events and facts depicted in Book of Mormon stories don’t conflict with the discoveries of science. In fact, I would assert that under scientific scrutiny, the Book of Mormon fares significantly worse than the Bible (which is saying a lot, considering the Bible’s track record). Here are a few clear opportunities to label Book of Mormon stories as metaphors that mainstream Mormons never take:

1. The American Indians, who the Church (until 2006) believed were descended principally from large Semitic nations that dominated the Americas for about 1000 years (Nephites and Lamanites), as chronicled in the Book of Mormon,¹ are actually genetically Asian. Their ancestors came from Siberia to the American continent via a land bridge that existed anciently.
2. Crucial Book of Mormon animals (horses, domesticated cattle, elephants, domesticated sheep, goats, swine)? No trace.
3. Crucial Book of Mormon ores and alloys (iron and steel)? No trace.
4. Millions of Jaredites and hundreds of thousands of Nephites and Lamanites (numbers rivaling the size of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans) who died on the same battlefield, years apart? No trace.
5. The Book of Mormon’s Jaredite civilization is supposed to have formed in the wake of the miraculous confounding of human languages at the Tower of Babel. LDS apologist John L. Sorenson places the date of that event at the unreasonably early date of 3100 BC². Even accepting this strained, faith-accommodating date as the best estimate for the event, it is still right around the generally accepted date of the emergence of the Sumerian writing system (3100 BC), which developed long after humans were already speaking Sumerian and any number of other languages, not the mythical “Adamic” language.

For somebody taking the “inspired metaphor” approach, just the few conflicts between the Book of Mormon and scientific consensus listed above seem to place the entire Book of Mormon narrative in the category of metaphor. It’s no wonder this approach is not accepted in mainstream Mormonism–as applied to any LDS Scripture, including the Bible and the Book of Mormon. This rejection of the “inspired metaphor” approach places mainstream Mormons in the same camp as the creationists and intelligent design proponents.

Definitely not my camp.

-PWM

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1. For example, the Nephites and Lamanites “did cover the whole face of the land, both on the northward and on the southward, from the sea west to the sea east“
2. I think 3100 BC is early because the Book of Mormon indicates that only about 30 generations of Jaredites lived prior to the civilization’s demise sometime after 600 BC, which requires an unthinkable 80+ years per generation, if we take Sorenson’s early date. With this in mind, the more mainstream Christian/LDS date (acknowledged by Sorenson) of around 2200 BC seems early too (50+ years per generation). Using Sorenson’s dates, about 125 generations (20 years per generation) would be more reasonable, but possibly still a bit low. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that as far as science is concerned, the chronology of Middle Earth is just as real.

When I was 18 years old, I realized that I was mere months away from high school graduation, and that I was expected to follow through on my lifelong plan to go on a two-year mission for the LDS Church, during which time I would work to persuade people to join the Church. I decided that I should prepare for my mission by making an effort to learn more about the Church than I had learned in Sunday school and daily seminary classes.

I found a book on my dad’s bookshelf titled Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon. I thought that would be a great place for me to start supplementing my understanding, since the Book of Mormon–a key proselyting tool for LDS missionaries–is about the Semitic ancestors of the present-day Native Americans. I stood at the bookshelf thumbing through the book, and soon my excited curiosity turned to confusion, and then to alarm, as I realized that the author of the book was coming from the perspective that Joseph Smith had written the Book of Mormon himself, and that it wasn’t actually a literal history of the ancient American inhabitants merely discovered and translated by Joseph Smith. I was astonished that a scholarly book with that thesis could be published, since it seemed so mind-blowingly counter to all I had been taught about the “keystone of our religion”.

I immediately went and asked my dad about the book. Why did he have it? Did he believe its assertion that the Book of Mormon is not a product of divine intervention?

I know what you might be thinking. This is the part where my dad smiles at me and says “Congratulations son, you have just discovered one of the secrets we adults in the Church keep from the kids until they are ready to take the next step into adulthood. You are mature enough now to learn that there is actually no hard evidence substantiating Joseph Smith’s claims about the Book of Mormon–no ancient American artifacts pointing to the Semitic people described in the book, no proof that Joseph dug the plates out of the ground at the direction of an angel, and not even any evidence that Joseph Smith had the ability to translate ancient languages into English (in fact, he feigned that ability more than once, with disastrous results). Even if you aren’t convinced that the book is literally true, there are valuable lessons and principles in it that I hope have shaped your understanding of yourself and your culture, and have given you reference points for exploring and conceptualizing your newly-expanded world. I’m proud of you for autonomously reaching for knowledge beyond what you are spoon-fed, and I am certain that if you continue actively pursuing knowledge, you will reap great rewards throughout your life. Lets go grab dinner and celebrate. My treat.”

That’s not what happened. My dad seemed taken aback by my questions. He told me that he had read a lot of books contradicting the claims of Mormonism, but he had never read anything that overcame his feeling–his testimony–that the LDS Church is absolutely God’s one true church. My anxiety was assuaged to some extent just by the notion that my dad had faced down those competing theories about our religion, but was still convinced of its truth. I thought maybe I could still consider serving a mission, despite realizing that there was serious, reasoned (published) opposition to my worldview out there that I knew very little about. I wondered if, instead of engaging that opposition, I could simply pray to Heavenly Father and ask him to give me a testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, like my dad had.

I went to my room, closed the door, got down on my knees and prepared to pray for a long time. This wasn’t going to be easy. Anxiety and doubts kept coming over me in waves. I began the prayer, concentrating all of my energy on communicating with God. Then, suddenly, I couldn’t remember why I was praying. I knew that I had been very worked up and worried about something, but I just couldn’t remember what it was. The burden was gone; I felt free and light. I remember wiping the tears from my eyes and laughing out loud to myself about the whole crazy situation. I got in bed and went peacefully to sleep.

The next morning, I was able to remember the whole incident. I still had the same questions about the Book of Mormon, but they just didn’t seem as intense or important as before. I was a bit disappointed that I hadn’t had a stereotypical “Holy Ghost” feeling confirming the truth of the Book of Mormon, but then I remembered a passsage of scripture that seemed applicable. I opened Doctrine & Covenants 9:8-9:

8. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.

9. But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong…

I read that and realized that I had been looking for a verse 8 “bosom shall burn within you” feeling confirming that the Book of Mormon was true, but when I forgot my worry that the Book of Mormon might not be true, I was actually having a verse 9 “stupor of thought” causing me to “forget the thing that was wrong”. I was very pleased and relieved to realize that I had gotten the message from the Holy Ghost, and could say that I had a testimony that the Book of Mormon was true. Whatever books were out there denying that fact could wait until I completed my mission.

-PWM

1. God (a.k.a. “Heavenly Father”) exists.
2. Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of humankind.
3. The LDS Church is Jesus Christ’s one true church, comprising his only authorized franchise for teaching people the essential doctrines and administering the rituals (commonly called the “ordinances”) necessary for salvation in the highest kingdom of heaven. (These doctrines and ordinances are collectively referred to as “the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”.)
4. Joseph Smith was a prophet, chosen personally by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to be given the authority to act and speak on behalf of God (the “priesthood”) and with that authority to restore Christ’s true church and the fullness of the Gospel, all of which were briefly in the possession of the early Christian Church after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but were lost shortly thereafter (in an event and period of time called “The Great Apostasy”).
5. The current head of the LDS Church is a prophet of God–a legitimate successor of Joseph Smith’s priesthood authority.

While the above facts form the minimum foundation for a testimony that an orthodox member of the Church must profess to have, a Mormon can have a testimony of a lot more facts than that, including (but not limited to) any of the following:

• My life has a purpose.
• I am a child of God, who loves me.
• God wants me to take a certain course of action (i.e., take a this job, move to this city, invest in this cousin’s multi-level marketing company, marry this person, have another baby, etc.).
• Drinking caffeinated soda is forbidden.
• Drinking caffeinated soda is not forbidden.
• Paying 10% of my gross (rather than net) income to the LDS Church is the correct tithe.
• Pornography is bad.
• Evolution is a false theory of men–God created Earth and everything on it in a period of six thousand years or so.
• Evolution is the mechanism by which God created Earth and everything on it over a period of billions of years.
• A member of the LDS priesthood can anoint my head with consecrated extra virgin olive oil and pronounce a special prayer to heal me from any illness.
• Birth control is wrong.
• Birth control is right.
• God wants me to go visit this person.
• God wants me to say this.
• Gay people should not be getting married to each other.
• Polygamy is a true principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
• Events described in the Holy Bible literally happened, for the most part.
• The Book of Mormon is the most correct book on Earth, and everything described therein literally happened.
• People of Semitic descent populated all of North and South America for a thousand years, from around 600 B.C. to around 400 A.D.
• People of Semitic descent lived in a very limited geographical area somewhere in South or Central America for a thousand years, from around 600 B.C. to around 400 A.D.

The list could go on and on. You will note that some of the items on the list are contradictory, which might cause you to conclude that a testimony is a strictly subjective thing, unrelated to objective reality. You would be wrong, however. In Mormonism, a testimony is actually considered to be a means of confirming and understanding objective truth–a shortcut for those who can’t (or don’t want to) make the observations and tests necessary to establish a fact. In fact, a testimony is considered to be even more accurate or essentially True than scientific observations made through the five senses.²

With that in mind, the inconsistencies in the list above can be explained by differences in people’s capacity to read or understand communication from the Holy Ghost. A person who is accurately receiving and understanding the Holy Ghost’s messages is said to be “in tune”. Theoretically, if everybody were truly in tune with the Holy Ghost, there would be no contradictions on the list.

-PWM

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1. Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley said: “I would like to say to you, that is the strength of this cause, the individual testimony that lies in the hearts of the people. The strength of this church is not in its buildings, in its chapels, in its offices, in its schools; it is not in its programs or its publications. They are important, but they are only a means to an end, and that the end is the building of the testimony – a conviction that will weather every storm and stand up to every crisis in the hearts and lives of the membership.” (Gordon B. Hinckley, Area Conference Report, August 1971, Manchester, England, pp. 160-161. As quoted in Testimony, pp. 8-9)
2. “Remember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other…Should doubt knock at your doorway, just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts: ‘I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people. I know that happiness and contentment are there, and I forbid you, agnostic, doubting thoughts to destroy the house of my faith. I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. I grant that I cannot explain the miracles of the Bible, and I do not attempt to do so, but I accept God’s word. I wasn’t with Joseph, but I believe him. My faith did not come to me through science, and I will not permit so-called science to destroy it.” (Thomas S. Monson, “The Lighthouse of the Lord,” New Era, February 2001, p. 4)

Jack Mormons, despite having left the Church, continue to view the world essentially through the lens of Mormonism, and maintain the essential beliefs of the mainstream LDS Church. They are basically orthodox (i.e., correct in their religious beliefs), but they are not orthoprax (i.e., correct in their religious practices). Jack Mormons and mainstream members of the LDS Church get along pretty well, because Jack Mormons confirm and support LDS religious beliefs; their only problem is failing to obey the rules. They agree that they aren’t doing what they are “supposed” to do, and they can often be coaxed back into participation.

Apostates are a different story. Apostates and mainstream members of the LDS Church generally have a much harder time getting along, because Apostates are often neither orthodox nor orthoprax–they have knowingly discarded the essential LDS paradigm and beliefs, and that is why they do not obey the rules. The dynamic of the relationship is different from the relationship with Jack Mormons–it’s not merely about participating (”active”) vs. non-participating (”inactive”) Mormons, it’s about believing vs. non-believing Mormons. When believing Mormons engage Apostates, they come dangerously close to questioning their own beliefs, and becoming Apostates themselves. Not surprisingly, the LDS Church openly demonizes and belittles people it considers to be Apostates, and teaches that they are covenant-breaking servants of Satan (see, for example, this 2007 adult Sunday school lesson, titled “Beware the Bitter Fruits of Apostasy”, which was recently presented in LDS congregations worldwide).

Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland recently publicly belittled people who don’t believe in the literal historicity of the Book of Mormon. He called them “foolish”, “misled”, and “deceived”, and derided their attempts to explain the origins of the Book of Mormon in naturalistic terms as “pathetic”. He likened people who leave the Church for intellectual reasons to insects or vermin of some sort who have to “crawl over, or under, or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit.” Jeffrey R. Holland apparently likes to pontificate about the awful fates and consequences that await intellectual dissenters from the Church (and their children). I wrote more about that here.

Obviously, if you want to leave, but still maintain relatively positive contact and open relationships with members of LDS communities, it is easier to be a Jack Mormon than to be an Apostate.

-PWM