Meditation on Death, and Nature

The following essay is a summation of thoughts I have had locked away inside for some time.  Today they just came pouring out, in an online discussion about ethics (including the morality of humans killing animals and other life in order to feed ourselves).

I am not going to argue that death is always a bad thing. But this means that human death is also not always a bad thing. We cannot make it our practice to keep people alive at all costs, when the cost is destroying the possibility for future generations (of people and all the other life we need to survive).

I don't support "whatever it takes" to keep people from starving, since in my experience "whatever it takes" will amount ultimately to postponing useful death for useless death: nature culls what she cannot support; when we make her support what she would rather not without reservation, we eventually end up on the wrong side of the ledger she uses to maintain the balance that we all enjoy.

Ever since humans invented agriculture (and perhaps before), we have been pursuing the theory that individuals don't really matter. If I drop dead tomorrow, one of my 21 children will pick up the slack (and take my place on the field, in the factory, in the army, doing our bit to keep the human hive alive). Potato farmers in Ireland died not because of fungus, in my view, but because they were expendable resources (whose encroaching presence nature resisted: Ireland is not able to support infinite crowds of people; when we try to make it do so, it defends itself by putting out blights and such, culling the weak). This has always been Nature's way, and it will continue until we destroy her; as we speak, the ruthless goddess we all serve willy-nilly continues to pursue her savage justice, killing weak people all over the world. Trying to make her stop being so mean just throws fuel on the fire, if history is any judge: we beat a small plague so that we can have a bigger one. Smallpox, polio, and measles go down so that AIDS, superbugs, and "diseases of civilization" can take their place. There is no end in sight (for me: I am aware that some people see things differently, and I am content with that; this post is mostly just an exercise in verbalization for me; I have been keeping these thoughts inside too long).

I don't ask for mercy from Nature. I don't think I can control her. I don't think anyone can, really. The most we can realistically hope for, in my view, is finding a somewhat pleasant balance with Nature (by letting her have her own way as much as possible, with our contribution being a mitigation of her most painful "remedies" uncorked against us; let me die of AIDS, or some superbug, or diabetes, but at least I can say goodbye to my friends and go peacefully in a bed, with someone else there to close my eyes and hand my corpse back to the Mother (who resists my effort to last too long or leave too many descendants: she loves the individual, the small group, more than I do, perhaps).

If I could sum up my attitude in one sentence, it would be something like this: "Nature is beautiful, and she is trying to kill you; for your own good, you had better come quietly."

Michel's Iron Law of Oligarchy

D. Michael Quinn.  The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power. Signature: Salt Lake City, 1997.  ISBN: 1560850604.

"This German sociologist [Robert Michel] argued that no matter how democratic and altruistic any movement is at its inception, "whoever says organization, says oligarchy."  Thus Mormonism became [in the words of Thomas O'Dea] "a democracy of participation and an oligarchy of decision-making and command"  (quoted from Quinn, p. 408).

My own (admittedly limited) experience with organizations (both personal and vicarious) confirms Michel's law.  The creation of authorities necessarily involves the creation of non-authorities: rulers create subjects, just as surely as subjects anoint rulers.  Some people long to rule just as much as others long to be ruled.  So we cannot really help scratching our mutual itch every now and then.

Two insights stand out to me in the wake of Quinn's book (which gives a clear, candid account of the LDS church hierarchy from its inception, covered in greater depth in a previous volume, to the end of the twentieth century).

First, human beings are just apes in suits.  We cannot really help themselves.  We naturally group together, establish hierarchies, and play the game of currying favor.  (Even when we pointedly step away from the game, we are still playing, particularly when we do so in a forum where others can observe our action.)  There is no fundamental difference separating the antics chronicled by Quinn from similar behavior observed among baboons by Robert Sapolsky.  Yes, we wear clothes.  We talk.  We reason.  We keep trying to get things better.  Sometimes, we even succeed, but that does not fundamentally change the nature of the game we are playing--a game much older than our species.  My take-away message from this observation is that I should never expect more from people than they are capable of delivering.  It isn't fair to set an impossibly high standard for the suited ape, even if he sets it out there (rhetorically) for himself.  Of course he wants to do the right thing--to succeed where others have failed, to achieve heaven on earth (or whatever it is people want now)--but at the end of the day, this will always mean that he invites some people to subject themselves to others.  That is OK.  There is not much else he can do.  The human will has its limits: it is not really free; or perhaps better, whatever freedom it has comes along with overriding natural limits (without which it could not exist at all: we require some "slavery" in order to be "free" the same way we require immobility in order to move; without some built-in restriction, no joint experiences its full range of motion).  When some would-be boss promises you pie-in-the-sky as his employee, he is just doing what people do.  If you decide to take the contract, recognize beforehand that you are making a bet, a bet that might not pay off the way you expect.  Caveat emptor.  If you were born into a contract you never really picked, welcome to the club of life.  We all start out young and foolish.  The question is not why me? but what am I going to do about it?  Every ape will have his own answer, depending on his personal situation, and the choices, unfree as they are, do matter (though perhaps not always as much as some people would like to think: recovery from bad bets is easier if you don't beat yourself up over them more than you have to).

My second insight is that there are just two "core doctrines" of Mormonism (as I see it; it is fine if others think differently).  These are (1) follow the leader and (2) follow your gut.  Over the years, Mormon authorities, preachers, and apologists have said all kinds of contradictory things (about everything from the nature of God to what it means to be a member of the LDS church): the only things they agree on are that we should follow the Brethen and the Holy Spirit.  In theory, these things never conflict with one another; in practice, they are always conflicting (with the Spirit telling people all kinds of contradictory things: he made Hugh B. Brown a liberal and Ezra Taft Benson a Bircher; Mitt Romney is still trying to figure out how to straddle both sides without coming across as too lukewarm for Jesus freaks, who may or may not be Mormon in this era where Latter-day Saints do their best to look like Southern Baptists). 

What interested me most about Quinn's book was learning about all the different governing quorums the LDS church has had.  Growing up in the post-correlation church (thanks for overturning my applecart, Harold B. Lee!), I learned that the First Presidency was supreme from the first (by divine appointment).  It was a revelation to see that it is really just one of a sea of competing quorums: at one time or another, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the First Quorum of the Seventy, the Presiding Bishopric, the Presiding Patriarch, and the Council of Fifty all bid fair (at least on paper) to take the First Presidency's job (or at least some of their most important jobs: another revelation was the amount of secular work required to keep the church up and running).  To make a long story short, we could say that Brigham Young castrated these quorums: sending people on missions and failing to convene the Council of Fifty regularly so that he became a de facto autocrat.  Not everyone appreciated his high-handedness:

"Some of my brethren, as I have learned since the death of President Brigham Young, did have feelings concerning his course.  They did not approve of it, and felt opposed, and yet they dare not exhibit their feelings to him, he ruled with so strong and stiff a hand, and they felt that it would be of no use.  In a few words, the feeling seems to be that he transcended the bounds of the authority which he legitimately held.  I have been greatly surprised to find so much dissatisfaction in such quarters" (George Q. Cannon, quoted in Quinn, pp. 40-41).

This kind of "quiet" resistance and dissonance goes on through church history, with leaders pretending to present a united front in public even as they often disagree irreconcilably over church policy and doctrine in private (though occasionally circumstances flushed the disagreement out into the open, as when Ezra Taft Benson's strident political views drew pointed condemnation from fellow church leaders Harold B. Lee and Hugh B. Brown).  From my point of view, the most disturbing aspect of this dynamic is not its existence but the careful pretense that it does not exist.

As a member of the church, I would like to know that some church leaders were decidedly opposed to Henry D. Moyle's missionary program (which caused me grief as a missionary, even with its worst aspects removed).  It was kind of hard when I was supposed to swallow this program as the unproblematic will of God; it would have been very helpful (to me, to the non-members I interacted with as a missionary, and ultimately to the church) if I had known that it wasn't.  The unity of the Brethren behind this program was a facade, a polite fiction designed to protect my fragile testimony (too weak to deal with reality, apparently: how was I supposed to grow up and behave responsibly if I was never to know what I was really doing? whose plan I was really following? what engineers in-the-know thought about it?  Would you ask a man to drive a car confidently if some of the technicians who inspected it found it seriously defective?  Why am I supposed to care more about the condition of my appliances than that of my soul?).

As a member of the church, I would have liked to know the real reason that black males did not receive the priesthood until 1978.  Other LDS authorities were ready to give black men the priesthood as early as 1969, but Harold B. Lee vetoed their motion.  God had to wait for his prophet to die before He could get the priesthood ban lifted.  This is not exactly how I imagined revelation working as a little kid in Sunday School, but it sure offers a more reasonable way to deal with honest inquiries than the squirrely narrative I was stuck shilling as a missionary.  (We saw quite a few black people in northern Spain, most of them African, and if the subject of the ban came up, we found ourselves saying, "We have no idea why God waited so long to treat you like human beings.  You'll have to take it up with Him, eh?"  This always sounded lame to me.  Now I know why.  It's a cheap rhetorical trick, known commonly as the lie.  The fact that I came by it honestly does not change what it is.)

As a result of my experience in the LDS church, I have learned something about myself.  I don't like being played like a fool.  If you want to play me, fine.  Play me.  Bribe me.  Order me.  Lie to me, even, if you think that is the best way to get what you want.  But if you want me to trust you, tell the truth.  Don't pretend that you aren't really bribing me, that you aren't giving orders, that lies are true, or that I owe you trust that you never earn.  Don't try to play me, hoping I won't notice, and then try to pretend that you weren't really playing me, and that I shouldn't get all mad about it.  I may be dumb, but I'm not that dumb, and you aren't either.  A hunter respects his game, and a player can too.

To close out, I offer three short passages from Quinn that I really enjoyed:

(1) At the turn of the century J. Golden Kimball candidly complained that among the general authorities, "some men will kiss a man's ass to get to suck a sugar tit.  I would rather have the Courage to express my honest convictions" (quoted in Quinn, p. 17).  

Amen, Brother Kimball.  We need more like you.  Bring back the honest apes in suits!

(2) After his appointment to the First Council of Seventy in 1945, S. Dilworth Young stated his philosophy: "You must work through the Spirit.  If that leads you into conflict with the program of the Church, you follow the voice of the Spirit" (quoted in Quinn, p. 17).

This is certainly not the easiest road, but it feels right.  I have said before that I didn't leave the church as much as it left me.  The Spirit calls me to tell the truth as I see it and let the cards fall where they may.  When I ignore the truth, or worse, pretend that I see it otherwise than I do, I feel awful.

(3) Subordinates have sometimes been assigned to implement decisions they previously opposed and only reluctantly assented to ... When the Presidency assigned Apostle Mark E. Petersen in 1960 to form the stake he voted against organizing, Second Counselor Henry D. Moyle quipped, "Funny church, isn't it?" (quoted in Quinn, 18).

Yes, Brother Moyle, it is a funny church!  And that is as it should be.  The worst things happen when we take it all too seriously.  Today, I seriously think that religion should be a game: apes in suits, doing their little dances and pretending to fathom the mysteries of all existence (even as they come up with new ways to have fun and help each other: no one said they shouldn't have parties, or that these parties shouldn't be organized somehow, but there is no reason to take the organizers more seriously than their track record warrants).  The church is like the pub: a sacred institution where men (and women) can gather to be solemn or silly, sober or drunk, loud or quiet, depending on the circumstances.  There is no one true pub (pace my friends at the Cat's Cradle), and there is no point insisting that all pubs be the same (or pretending that some pubs have the magic property of making their denizens behave like gods instead of suited apes).  If we must have oligarchs, we must also be free to make fun of them, especially when they insist on tripping over the same banana peel over and over again.  ("I really am infallible!  Just watch me.  This time .... woops!")  People need to realize that they should question their leaders at least as often and as closely as they question themselves.

Getting What You Pay For

The past few years have been really hard for me, in some ways.  At the end of them, I am left in a rather awkward position.  On the one hand, I feel hopelessly alienated from the Corporation of the President that runs the LDS church.  On the other hand, I recognize that this Corporation is not really that bad, as corporations go.  Let me explain what I am talking about.

Recently, an LDS friend sent me a list of good things that the LDS church does.  That list offers as a good an entry as any into my subject.  Here it is (summarized in bold for brevity's sake: the original was rather long).

(1) The church does humanitarian work.  This is true, as far as it goes.  Since my disaffection, I have actually been more involved than I ever was in this aspect of church service, and I find it generally more satisfying than teaching classes about the imaginary righteousness of Joseph Smith.  Working in the bishop's storehouse has been a learning experience for me.

(2) The church sponsors the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  This is true, too, and I am not one of those people who doesn't like the choir.  I appreciate their music, and I think it represents a valuable cultural offering.

(3) The church sponsors pageants (like the Nauvoo Pageant or the Cumorah Pageant).  This is true.  I remember attending the Manti Pageant with my wife before we got married.  It was fun, and I am glad that we did it.

(4) The church sponsors Brigham Young University (BYU), a cheap place to go for a great education.  As a graduate of BYU, I agree with this one too.  I don't regret my alma mater (too much, anyway): without it, I would never have met my wife, or many of the friends who have had a formative, positive impact on my life over the last 10 years.  If I had to go back and be an undergraduate again, I might still choose to attend BYU, even if I went as a non-Mormon.

(5) The church helps people (like homosexuals) find righteous ways of living.  Here is where my cart of apples topples over (or starts to tip, anyway).  My friend references an article about Ty and Danielle Mansfield getting married "the right way" even though Ty is sexually attracted to men rather than women.  I do not disapprove of Ty and Danielle's decision to marry.  But I cannot hear their story without thinking of other stories I have heard over the past few years, stories of men like Ty who were advised to marry women without telling them that their husbands-to-be were sexually attracted to men.  Some of these men ended up stuck in family relationships that were untenable (having been built on a lie: they should have told their wives what they were signing up for).  Other men were given "shock therapy" -- strapped to electric chairs and zapped while watching homosexual pornography.  These things took place at BYU.  

To the Corporation's credit, I understand it has dropped its original, aggressive program for "correcting" homosexuality.  Convincing people like Ty to marry heterosexually of their own volition is an improvement over tying them to a chair, making them watch pornography, and electrocuting them.  But I am not convinced that Ty's solution is the solution for all people: if one of my sons ends up being gay, I would not advise him to take Ty's path without giving some serious thought to alternatives (though I would certainly accept him if he chose it for himself: my one stipulation would be that his wife-to-be understand her position as the spouse of a gay man).  I don't think it is moral to require celibacy of people.  (Historically this doesn't seem to work as a universal prescription, though individuals may do well with it.)  I don't think it is moral to require heterosexuality of them, either.  I don't see why homosexuals cannot have committed relationships with people to whom they are sexually attracted.  I would not want society to force me to marry someone I was not attracted to, and I am unwilling to demand for others what I would not choose for myself.

My real problem with the Corporation is not that it does no good, or that it treats homosexuals differently than I would (though that has the potential to be a real problem).  To get at my personal beef with the Corporation of the President, let's consider a really evil corporation, a corporation that makes the LDS church leaders look like Saints.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Monsanto.

Like the Corporation of the President, Monsanto offers services.  It has happy customers (including me and various nice people I know) who have voluntarily paid for these services and derived (as they thought) some benefit therefrom (less weeds, less bugs eating plant crops, hardier plant crops, etc.).  Like every company, including the Corporation of the President, Monsanto markets itself to the community (with ad campaigns and "missionaries").  The more happy customers it gets, the bigger it grows.  The bigger it grows, the more money (and social power) it has.  At some point, it is so large that some people are involved with it not for the services per se, but for the chance to make a killing when the company gets even bigger.  (It becomes an investment.)  The services are still important, but they become more and more abstract and universal (everyone should buy Monsanto!  Monsanto for all your farming and gardening needs, whether you live here, there, or anywhere).  The power of the individual customer cannot help but shrink in this environment: the bigger Monsanto gets, the less it cares what I think or do.  As long as it has millions of happy customers, why should it care what I think?  It answers to the market, not the customer, and its first business concern is reserved for shareholders rather than customers.  This is to some degree inevitable.

Every corporation comes with a downside.  There is no such thing as profit without loss.  Winning requires losing.  (If I want to be a great athlete, I have to lose time and energy.  Same thing if I want to become a great scholar, or parent, or businessperson.  Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven.)  Unfortunately for Monsanto, its downside is enormous.  It is destroying the environment that humanity requires in order to survive: the handy-dandy products it sells to happy customers destroy beneficial insects (especially honey bees) and represent a serious threat to healthy biodiversity worldwide.  Maybe this is a good thing.  Maybe the synthetic reality Monsanto sells us to replace the natural one they are destroying will end up being superior.  But I seriously doubt it.  I doubt the Monsanto engineers' ability to play God successfully.  I would feel safer if they went out of business sooner rather than later.

What does this have to do with the LDS Corporation of the President?  Well, first off, it shows that it is never enough to look at the good things an organization does while ignoring the bad things that it does.  The downside is more important than the upside, really: the benefits of Monsanto's products are no good to dead people.  Like Monsanto, the Corporation of the President has a downside, and no one should take part in the Corporation without knowing that downside (or at least having the opportunity to know it).  I have written some about the downside of the Corporation of the President in this blog as it has affected me personally.

In brief, my grievance with the Corporation of the President is that it was not honest with me.  It didn't come to me and demand obeisance because it was a good humanitarian organization, or a good investment if I wanted to attend an excellent school with low tuition.  It demanded obeisance because God appeared to its founder and maintained a special relationship with his successors in its corporate hierarchy.  I was very interested in the history of the founder and the nature of the hierarchy's special relationship with God -- too interested, as it turns out.  Putting aside how others might view my experience (which is not universal), the fact is that I personally feel betrayed by the Corporation.  I believed that it was what it advertised itself to be in my Primary classes, my Sunday School classes, my seminary classes, and even my BYU religion classes (though by then I was starting to see the cracks in the mirror).  I believed that its techniques for improving human morals worked, and I applied these techniques dutifully to myself -- until I realized that I was weakening my morality rather than strengthening it.  I wasn't in the church because I wanted pageants or good school on the cheap or a place to coordinate humanitarian work (which I did not get seriously involved with until my disaffection).  I was in it for an upside that didn't exist: I though it would make a calm, capable, moral, upstanding person; instead, I became a nervous wreck.  While I am still something of a basket-case, I feel better (emotionally, physically, and "spiritually") since ceasing to believe in the supernatural claims of the Corporation and renouncing my efforts to conform to its program for moral improvement.

As a result of my experience, I see the Corporation of the President from a vantage point that will seem strange to believers and non-believers alike whose experience with the LDS church is not like mine.  That is OK.  I do not expect everyone to be just like me.  I do not think that would make the world a better place, really.  Unlike many disaffected Mormons, I am not really very angry at the church.  The worst things it did to me were mostly things I did to myself, and recovering from them (in my case -- I am aware that others are not always so fortunate) did not require that much beyond a personal readjustment.  I lost no family.  I didn't even lose any friends.  The only things I lost were things I was glad to get rid of: misdirected shame and fear, and a moral duty to put the Corporation before my conscience.

Today, I see the Corporation of the President as a relatively harmless company in our society.  If all companies came handicapped the way it is (by its known history and its respect for individual decisions to opt in or not), then we would be pretty safe.  But unfortunately, there are other fish out there, man-eating sharks like Monsanto (which is coming to eat you for breakfast, willy-nilly).  Combating these companies requires a lot of resources: time, talents, and such -- time and talents that I will not have disposable if I am spending hours of every week learning and teaching the gospel of Joseph Smith.  While others' experience is doubtless different, my experience with the church has been that it spends an inordinate amount of time and effort on the parts of the gospel that I now find utterly unconvincing (and often worse than useless).  We LDS aren't working in the bishop's storehouse on Sunday: we're getting together to talk about history that never happened, strategies for moral improvement that don't work (at least not as advertised), and (hopefully! if we're lucky) some music and socialization.  I don't want the history or the strategies (they make me sick), and I can get music and socialization elsewhere (maybe even in a place like the bishop's storehouse).  The situation is even bleaker if I am good and attend to all my LDS duties outside of Sunday worship.  Let's assume I study scriptures daily, work on my genealogy, go home-teaching, receive home-teachers, and attend leadership meetings outside of regular worship services.  I also have a full-time job.  How am I supposed to develop a program for living well?  How am I supposed to have a personal life?  How am I supposed to come up with a viable alternative to the mess that is Monsanto?  It is easier to get things done when I am not loaded down with busywork.  Instead of spending more time sitting around talking about history that isn't really history and strategies for moral improvement that don't really work, I can grow a garden, take up bee-keeping, volunteer at a soup-kitchen, or relax with friends who don't care how I see the church.  Some people can juggle better than I can, no doubt, but that doesn't mean that I should drop things that I find really compelling in exchange for things that have no obvious value for me.

Paradoxically, I find myself agreeing with Dallin Oaks (and, less paradoxically, with Voltaire): "We have to forego some good things in order to choose others that are better" (or as Voltaire has it, le mieux est l'ennemi du bien).  My circumstances make the upside of being an active LDS relatively small, especially when you consider that I am not really able to do what the LDS church does best (and most often): teach myth as history and current church disciplinary practices as effective psychotherapy.  The man-eating shark in the room here is Monsanto and other companies like it, which profit from the inaction of people like me -- "happy" customers too busy (too distracted by busywork?) to notice that their herbicides and pesticides come at a horrible price.  If we talked about useful stuff at church, like how to grow crops or keep bees, then I might consider going back.

Today, I see the LDS church as family: they are the ornery old uncle, who means well and does some good but has an unfortunate tendency to mouth off at family gatherings (and even get into fist fights).  I don't want the church to die.  I think it could be better than it is, and I encourage it to keep striving for the ideal it aims at in much of its rhetoric.  Monsanto, on the other hand, is evil: they are the psychopathic serial killer who has no compunction about destroying anyone or anything to get what they want.  I would be very happy if their business died.  The hatred and disdain I feel for them is much less conflicted than my feelings for the LDS church.  (Paradoxically, it is much harder for me to disentangle myself from Monsanto than from the LDS.  The really dangerous bastards are the ones you cannot get rid of simply by smiling and closing the door.)

My Bona Fides

Several people have asked me why I implicitly trust "anti-Mormons" more than Mormons.  I do not believe that I do.  As an adult, the only thing I must trust is myself: I really don't have much choice on this one.  If I cannot believe my own eyes (heart, mind, and soul), then I have an insuperable problem.  My trust of others depends on how their presentation of reality coheres with mine.

Like every child, I began life trusting my parents.  I still trust them, though they have taught me not to rely on them for everything, because they are good parents.  Today, I love and respect them, and I trust them enough to tell them how I really feel about things, even when I know that our feelings are not perfectly matched.  I don't expect them to have all the answers to my life's questions: that would be unrealistic (and uncalled for; growing up means learning to find and implement answers for oneself responsibly).  When it comes to Mormon history, I will admit that I tend to look past my parents, not because they are untrustworthy people, but because they have not made an extensive study of Mormon history.  That is perfectly OK.  I respect that.  (They don't ask me for advice with their cars, because I have not made an extensive study of car engines.  I hope that is OK, too, since I don't see my knowledge of practical mechanics increasing dramatically any time soon.)  The fundamental trust that I have for my parents comes down to their motives: I expect them to mean me well, always.  I don't question the goodness of their intentions every time they offer me something.  I hope they can say the same for me.  I do my best to ensure that they can.

Since I have been blessed with a good family, I trust my other family members much the same way that I trust my parents.  I believe that the people close to me mean me well.  This is even true of my little sons, whose occasional assaults on their parents' well-being come from ignorance rather than malice.

There have been a few people with whom I have dealt who have seemed untrustworthy.  Most often, these were people I interacted with sporadically (occasionally by choice: I realized I did not like them and took measures to avoid dealing with them).  I am not sure that my lack of trust has always been justified, and I don't pretend to condemn anyone forever on the basis of my suspicions (even when they have proven entirely justified by historical events).

So much for my personal acquaintance.  Outside of that relatively narrow sphere, the game changes considerably.  For brevity's sake, let's talk about the LDS church.  I don't know anyone in the governing church hierarchy.  I have no personal connection to the prophets, seers, and revelators (or their most immediate henchmen).  I don't know how they do business day-to-day, and I don't pretend that they aren't perfectly good fathers, grandfathers, or businessmen.  As a result of my personal and professional interests in Mormonism and history, I have accidentally come to a place where I must pass judgment on their ability as theologians and historians.  The facts that I have for doing this do not exist in the same category as angry partisan rumors floating around during an election year.  To demonstrate that this is true, I will offer a few examples:

(1)  There is no serious question whether Joseph Smith did or did not marry multiple women, including some who were quite young.  He did.  There is no serious question whether he did or did not destroy a printing press that was used to bring some of his sexual hijinks to light.  He did.  How one chooses to view his character in light of these facts is a matter of personal opinion, but it is no good pretending that he did not practice polygamy or make a deliberate attack on American freedom of speech.

(2)  There is no serious question that the purported source of the Book of Abraham is an Egyptian funeral text much more recent than Abraham (assuming the latter existed as an historical personage).  There is no serious question that it says nothing about Abraham, and Joseph Smith's interpretations of the facsimiles are patently bogus: in simple English, they say nothing like what Joseph Smith said they say.  How we choose to react to this information is a matter of personal decision, but it is impossible for me to pretend (i) that I was not interested in the papyrus, (ii) that I did not learn a thing or two about ancient Egyptian, and (iii) that Joseph Smith had no idea how to translate it.

(3)  There is no serious question whether prophets, seers, and revelators today are aware of facts like the two I just presented.  At one point or another, they have seen the same materials that I have seen, and they have made their own decision about how best to deal with problematic aspects of Mormon history.

(4)  Unfortunately, there is no question that the official stance of modern prophets, seers, and revelators regarding problematic Mormon history has been that people like me should be kept in the dark regarding facts like those in numbers (1) and (2) above.  I grew up attending Primary and Sunday School every week.  I took four years of seminary.  I served a full-time mission for the Corporation of the President.  Never, in any church publication, did I find even a hint of facts like those above in numbers (1) and (2).  If I did get a whiff of them, they were presented as utterly baseless slander.  I assumed this was correct.  I trusted church leaders.  When people came to me (as a teenager, as a college student, and later as a missionary) with problematic information about Mormon history, I sent them to check their facts.

Then, I grew up.  I went to school.  I was confident that I knew the difference between fact and slander.  (I remain confident of my ability in this regard.)  I looked into the historical record, bypassing the simplified accounts I learned as a child.  I assumed that this would be unproblematic, as it had been before: when I was little, my mother read a children's version of the Bible to us; later, I read the real thing for myself and found it not much different from what she read.  I assumed church leaders had summarized Mormon history the same way, i.e. such that I would recognize the stories I was familiar with when I turned to the real record (upon which those stories were supposedly based).  Unfortunately, they did not.  Worse, the discrepancies were most telling in the most critical parts of the stories I learned as a child: e.g. the story of the First Vision, the story of Nauvoo (which we didn't really get in seminary, it turns out), and the story of Deseret (the early Mormon theocracy in the Rocky Mountains). 

(5)  Honestly, the hardest fact for me to deal with peaceably in this litany is the fact that I trusted church leaders to tell me the truth and that they deliberately hid it from me (or at the very least, they hid crucial data that should have informed my decision to believe or not in their claim to divine authority).  Not only did they hide stuff from me, they used me as a tool to infect others with false information.  To this day I recall with shame an encounter I had with two gypsies in the city of La Coruna in northern Spain (where I served an LDS mission).  These gentlemen were evangelical preachers, and they felt a duty to warn two Mormon missionaries of the error of their ways.  They were not very articulate or genteel: when they weren't out preaching, they might have been mechanics or day laborers.  When they brought up the story of the First Vision, they told it wrong (with just one heavenly messenger approaching Joseph Smith: they were confident that this must have been the devil).  Thinking I knew my history from years of study in the church, I informed them that they must be mistaken, since Joseph Smith did not see just one personage.  The confrontation ended (as it usually does in these instances, with neither side moved), and my companion and I retired elated with victory.  We were correcting misinformation, spreading the word of truth, and growing the kingdom of God.  How bitter it was for me, recalling this incident, when I discovered the multiple accounts of the First Vision -- including one earlier than the "official" version (published in the Pearl of Great Price) that had Joseph receiving a visit from a single heavenly messenger.  Those evangelical hicks knew something about my history that I didn't know.  I lied to them.  I told them they had bad information when I was the one whose facts were wrong.  That hurts.

The information that the church "hides" to create liars like me (more effective because we think we are being honest) is not really hidden, of course.  Richard Bushman published a lot of it in Rough Stone Rolling (which I have talked about elsewhere on this blog).  I freely admit that I could have found it, even as a teenager, if I had had any desire to supplement my lessons in church.  For better or worse, I didn't get around to verifying the bona fides of the Corporation of the President until relatively late in the game, i.e. after I had already consecrated myself, my time, my talents, and any other assets I might have to that corporation and had begun to make good on that solemn promise.  Today, it seems really obvious to me that I put way too much trust in the prophets, seers, and revelators of the LDS church (whom I did not really know), and that they betrayed that trust.  When I see them in the spotlight today, they don't seem at all repentant or forthcoming.  While that does not make them utterly unreliable people in every aspect of their lives, it does mean that I am done trusting them with the integrity of my soul.  I already tried that, and it ended badly.  Why stick my hand back in the bear trap?

Working for the Man

Dire Straits.  "The Man's Too Strong."  In Brothers in Arms. Warner Brothers, 1985.

I wrote this in response to a friend who pointed me to an article referencing Ann Romney.

I actually agree with this article too, for the most part.  I think the choice to stay out of the workforce is a valid one for the individual (whether male or female), and I agree that the family (whatever people make it up) constitutes an important check on the larger community in terms of forming and imparting moral value(s).

My only dog in this fight is that I am very suspicious of the larger community, including organizations that break families up or prevent them from forming in the name of protecting them.  I think Ann Romney should be free to live as she wants (with her family, as it turns out).  I think other people should be similarly free (even if they are gay, or members of some minority religion -- including what some would call atheism or humanism).  I grew up thinking that there were some larger social organizations that defended the family and others that attacked it.  Now I think that all larger social organizations attack the family -- not necessarily because they want to; that is just what their existence entails in the long run: the Democratic party is bad for families; the Republican is too; Wal-Mart is bad for families; and the LDS church can be too (along with every other church out there).  I work for the university: this is good for my family, in that it gives them food that they need to survive; it is also bad for them, in that it takes me away from them for long hours.  There are palliatives that I get to help out with the hurt (subsidies for childcare, healthcare, scholarships providing paid leave, etc.), but they do not cancel it: they just make it a little easier to bear (sometimes, for those who are in a position to take advantage of them).

As I see it, we are all caught in a constant balancing game: we all have to serve our families by leaving them (and playing roles in larger organizations).  The key to playing this game well is recognizing when our service to the Man (the larger organizations) becomes more of a drag then a benefit.  This is really hard to do when the Man pressures you into making Him your first priority (the third wheel in your marriage, the first in line to take a cut from your paycheck, the one whose direct order you are honor and duty bound to obey, or else).

I think I have come to a better relationship now with the Man than I have ever had, though I know I have a long way to go.  I am still very paranoid: I find it really hard to trust people outside of my family.  I tend to avoid dealing with my superiors in the Man's hierarchy more than I probably should (leading them to think of me as a bit of a loose cannon, perhaps).  The hard thing, for me, is learning to trust the Man at all.  I trusted Him too absolutely before, and He really burned me.  I don't know if I will ever be really comfortable with Him again.

Furor Pietatis

William Kalosieh.  A Caricature of Piety: My Descent into Scrupulosity and Compulsions. Xlibris, 2010. ISBN: 9781450020923.

My wife gave me this book a while back, and I read it through with great interest.  John Dehlin's recent podcast on LDS scrupulosity sent me back to it, and I decided to do this little post collating things from Mr. Kalosieh's experience that match my own life and thinking. 

On Sex and Pathological Guilt.  In the following anecdote (pp. 86-88), Mr. Kalosieh describes very well the kind of religious experience that was the bane of my young adulthood:

[As a teenager in high school,] I was watching an old movie on TV, and the heroine was Lucille Ball in a dramatic role. I was accustomed to seeing her in the comedy series I Love Lucy and had never thought of her in a sensual way. As I was watching the movie, she appeared fully dressed, but her breasts caught my attention--and in a flash the thought passed through my mind, "I never realized she was so big." I was immediately struck with fear, terror, and guilt.  I found myself accusing myself of having indulged in impure thoughts. The more I defended myself to myself, the worse it became. I was having an argument within myself, and I was losing. I could not minimize nor allay my anxiety. I certainly could not forgive a momentary indiscretion because my accuser (my "conscience") did not see it as minor. Sex is serious. I had deliberately taken pleasure in a sexual thought. I knew it was wrong and I fully consented to it; therefore, I had committed a mortal sin. Those who commit mortal sins, according to the Baltimore Catechism, are not worthy of God's friendship nor of heaven. If you die in a state of mortal sin, you die as God's enemy and go right to hell. There and then, and for many months to come, I thought how horrible my plight was. Other people who have all kinds of problems and enemies can run and hide under God's protective wing, be consoled by his love for them despite their hardships. But when God is your enemy, where can you go and hide? From where can you seek extraordinary help? When God hates you, so does all of heaven.

Over and over and over again in my mind, I questioned whether I had indeed taken any pleasure in the thought--fully or partially. I had already conceded to my accusing conscience, which was berating and vilifying me, that the deliberate entertaining of impure thoughts was mortal, not venial, but I protested that I did not take pleasure in the thought and that the thought was not deliberate but spontaneous. To no avail. Like a victim in the jaws of a crocodile, my conscience had had its teeth in my mind and heart and was twisting and thrashing me about mentally and emotionally. After several hours of this internal struggle and with tears streaming down my face, I thought to myself, "I wish I had never been born." My reaction to this thought was as intense as the reaction to the internal passing idea regarding Lucille Ball. Had I not just then committed the dreaded and unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit alluded to in scripture? And so for several more hours, my conscience accused me of sinning against the Holy Spirit. It was the last thing on my mind before going to sleep at night, and the very first thing when I awoke. If I awoke in the process of turning in my bed, the thought of sin assailed me.

I did not discover sex [when this happened] ... I had had ample exposure to the differences between the sexes, and I'd picked up misinformation from my peers in the streets and from glimpses here and there. I played spin the bottle at graduation parties from grammar school and played who could kiss the longest with willing girls in the neighborhood.  The occasional nighttime emission and deliberate manual manipulation were not unknown to me. But never had my reaction to the mere hint of sexuality provoked such a dreadful and villainous response.

I could not wait to go to confession and rid myself of this dreadful guilt. I recall stumbling over my words as I attempted to both defend and accuse myself before a priest of St. George's Church. My sense of shame prevented me from going to Fr. Paul [the family priest] for confession. I was so distraught that I could not conceal my tears, but I was also angry because something inside me knew that I was innocent of the charge. Had I wished never to have been born? Was this a type of desire for suicide, and isn't suicide a slap in God's face for the gift of life? How does one explain all this to a priest in two or three minutes, when there are about a dozen people outside the confessional box waiting to be cleansed? The priest assured me that I had not committed the sin against the Holy Ghost and that I should avoid any near occasions of sexual sins in the future. I was absolved and given a penance to say. In my attempt to avoid all near occasions of sexual sins, I eventually realized that everyone and anything could, by association, eventually be considered sexual. For a while, I would not look at a girl or woman beyond an acknowledging glance.

Mr. Kalosieh's experience is like mine, only I was not even as normal as he was.  In my case, I was never able to do any of the "normal" things that didn't bother him as a kid.  (Night-time emissions in particular would send me into tailspins almost every time, following the path of guilty self-flagellation that he outlines.)  After I hit puberty, I was unable to interact normally with age-mates of the opposite sex until I was more than twenty years old.  I was too ashamed, too frightened.  Until I met my wife, I never had a girlfriend: more than that, I never had a friend who happened to be a girl close to my own age.  A few girls tried to be nice to me; I am ashamed to say I pushed them away.  I was caught in a very uncomfortable mental place, in which I alternately longed for female company (but could not have it because I was too impure) and eschewed it (because girls were agents of Satan, tempting me with walking pornography).  I was caught head over heels in the false mind-trap that reduces all sexually attractive women to impossibly pure virgins and/or impossibly evil whores.  Thank goodness I got out.

On Pathological Confession.  Kalosieh hits this one out of the park.  We could have been the same guy, though he happened to be Catholic instead of Mormon (pp. 88-89):

I cannot recall presently what all the subsequent "sins" were that I felt a horrible dread for, but I know that anything having to do with sex, getting angry, or hesitation to declare Christ publicly were the theme for many subsequent confessions. I could not distinguish temptation from sin, to the satisfaction of my accusing conscience.  Suppressed anger was still anger and required absolution. Likewise, any reluctance to proselytize, proclaim, and pray in public meant I was denying Christ. Once on the public transportation bus to school, I heard a girl whom I hardly knew say to a girlfriend in the course of their conversation that she intended not to attend mass the next day, which was a holy day of obligation. The thought was in my mind that as a good Catholic and out of fraternal concern for the welfare of her soul, I should call her at home and admonish her for her contemplated sin. I didn't know her phone number, but after hours of tormenting myself with "should I, shouldn't I," I gave in and found her number in the book, but stopped short of completing the call to her. By my private logic, I had denounced my affiliation with Christ and I was indifferent to her spiritual welfare! In a similar fashion, if someone took the Lord's name in vain, I felt compelled to assert, "Blessed be the name of Jesus!" If someone had a task to accomplish, I felt obligated to encourage them to say a prayer first. I felt very guilty if I said anything negative about anyone, especially if I made public "the unknown fault of another." And I thought I was rejecting God's grace whenever it was suggested to me to do an act of charity or of penance, because I was made aware of the chance to do good and I opted not to ...

All the while, I recognized in some small, rational manner that what was being "suggested," "demanded," "recommended" to me by the "Lord" or the voice of God--my conscience--could not be right. Failing to follow the internal directives generated guilt, shame, and terror. How does one pray at all if he believes God is furious with him? Going to confession was a nightmare for several reasons. First, the embarrassment of trying to convey to the priest why I thought I had both sinned and didn't sin. Second, his absolution was, in my mind, only going to be valid if I were truly sorry and fully resolved not to commit that "sin" again. I would always question myself, not only about the three things that made an action/thought sinful (knowledge, intent, full consent), but also on the sincerity of my contrition and resolve not to repeat the "sin." Third, if the priest did not execute his function correctly (fully aware and attentive, properly understanding the case being presented to him, accurately reciting the prayer of absolution), the forgiveness of sin would not have taken place. Fourth, more often than not, one of the above conditions was thought to be wanting, thereby invalidating the confession or the absolution, as a result of which I was still in "sin." Fifth, no sooner would a valid and acceptable confession be executed than another sin would get committed, requiring another confession. Were it not for the agonizing fear, the endless tendency to analyze and defend myself, the guilt felt and the tears shed, my confessions would have been comical. 

I remember doing everything Kalosieh talks about here.  Something would set me off (having a wet dream, seeing an attractive woman or girl, saying something that in retrospect did not strike me as wholly true or candid, etc.).  I would spend some time in solitary prayer, crying and begging God to have mercy on me.  I would look around desperately for signs that he had.  Sometimes I found them.  Other times, I didn't.  Either way, I would end up going to the bishop (the Mormon version of the priest who takes confession).  If I was really unlucky, our encounter would occur as part of some routine interview determining my worthiness to participate in a group youth activity (like a temple trip).  I would enter the bishop's office with my bitter self-accusation and self-defense, the paradox that Kalosieh describes so well above, and hijinks would ensue.  It didn't matter what the bishop did. If he agreed with my self-accusation, then I was despondent (sometimes suicidal, though I never got as far as acting out on any of my fantasies).  If he agreed with my self-defense, then I would depart in a state of temporary elation, which would always wear off quickly as I doubted the integrity of his decision (did he really hear what I was accusing myself of? was he paying close enough attention? was he ignoring the prompting of the Spirit that I should be dealt with more harshly?) and fell once more into "sin" (having a wet dream, seeing an attractive female, saying something even remotely dishonest).  In many ways, this latter option was worse: I got a little taste of forgiveness before God reached down and snatched it away again, smashing all my aspirations of escaping "sin" once and for all.  A little moment in heaven for all my hours in hell.  It was so frustrating.  No one understood what was wrong with me: I didn't, my parents didn't, and my bishop sure as hell didn't.

On Blame and Healing.  I resonate with much of what Kalosieh says here (pp. 237-239):

On a couple of occasions I have been asked if I blame the church for my inadequate (twisted?) spiritual upbringing and all the harm that came with it. Here too I am inclined to answer both yes and no. No, because I received virtually the same education and instruction as many of my peers, and they did not react to it as I did ... If one student is terrified by the instructor's teaching that to miss mass on Sunday is a mortal sin and the rest of the class is "indifferent" -- not sold on the teaching or merely curious about the idea -- why blame the teacher? This is not to say that the actual doctrine one is reared in makes no difference ... While religious doctrine that cultivates the notion of evil in human nature (or a primordial rupture between the person and the Divine) is not exclusively responsible for the tendency some people have to develop overwhelming guilt and obsessions regarding the ultimate questions of life, it is difficult to envision the cessation of such a disorder as long as this belief is instilled into young, impressionable minds ... Dealing with questions about the meaning and purpose of life (if any), the nature of being human, life before conception as well as life after death, the foundations of morality, etc., etc., does not necessarily unhinge a person, regardless of whether he believes or not. But the descent into the meaning of life and the significance of the individual is fraught with profound consequences, which only denial or suppression of human needs can take with an attitude of detached indifference. It is not the "fault" of religion (or any other human inquiry) that it deals with this type of soul-searching, and it is eventually up to the adult individual to decide what he accepts as true or what to reject as false, what he believes and what he doubts.

Paradoxes abound in the human dimension, and attempts to explain them are limited by language. Language itself is often inadequate to communicate meaning. The great religious thinkers and teachers rarely used a univocal paradigm by which to address their audiences. Variety and plurality of parables and metaphors characterized their teaching and constituted their pedagogy. Western minds are especially prone to become unsettled by this because it threatens the illusion that all knowledge should be black or white and lead to predictability and control ... If the [religious] student is a person of integrity and honesty, the ideas researched [as part of a religious education] may bring about a conversion of essential, foundational beliefs, which in turn regulate frameworks of thought and behaviors. Such inquiries may be debilitating precisely because the student must wrestle with his self, his meaning and his significance, that of others, as well as of life in general. The neophyte descends into the depths of selfhood searching for ultimate truths. His tools are of the very essence of his dignity and courage: freedom, intelligence, language, spirit, character, etc., but their value and suitability will be challenged. All who descend with the intent to excavate and explore are vulnerable to a primordial dimension of chaotic proportions, and the encounter can leave one indelibly marked. Singular explanations do not suffice there because the experiences defy portrayal with a photographic precision or a mathematical preciseness.

If I say, on the other hand, that I can fault, to a degree, those who educated me in the area of religion (and, specifically, in the areas of spirituality and morality) I can do so only because men and women recognized by history as giants in the field of spirituality and morality have themselves done so. For example, the mystic St. Teresa of Avila frequently advocated for spiritual direction from someone learned and educated, and complained that for many years, she was harmed by the wrong advice given to her by various spiritual directors. Good, pious intentions are not enough to be someone's spiritual director, and spiritual direction is a specialty. An individual with a number of cognitive dysfunctions may not be an ideal candidate for spiritual direction because the expertise to address the malfunctioning judgments, affects, and comprehension lie outside the typical spiritual director's scope, unless he is also trained in the art of pastoral counseling [as lay Mormon clergy are even less likely to be than their Catholic counterparts].

For me, healing required growing up and learning to deal with my own problems.  I had to put aside the counsel of scriptures, prophets, and local LDS leaders, and confront myself on my own terms, with no distractions.  Like Kalosieh, I discovered that I was uniquely fragile, broken, and dysfunctional.  I realized that there is no single, simple way to repair a broken psyche -- that my shattered soul required unique attention, a unique (and personally applicable) solution.  In the midst of all my weakness, however, I also discovered strength.  I found the ethical values I really do aspire to.  I learned what I really think about the nature of God, righteousness, and the universe.  I acquired an adult perspective on the world -- a perspective that is unique to me, a perspective that I use for myself but do not impose unnecessarily on other people.  I learned that others are different from me, sometimes vastly so, that their needs are not always my needs, and that they occasionally need things that I emphatically do not.  And I realized that I am OK with that, even thought it means that my conception of useful religious faith is nothing like the official doctrine of any organization, particularly not authoritarian organizations like the LDS or Catholic churches (which place the individual member under covenant to submit wholly and utterly to priesthood leaders).

I don't hold the LDS church wholly responsible for the fact that I was what I was.  I don't blame my parents, either.  And I don't blame myself.  We all did the best we could: I did, my parents did, and the church did, too.  Unfortunately, we were wrong about what was best for me.  Fortunately, I was able to figure out what was up before it got really out of hand (i.e. before I castrated or killed myself or became utterly committed to a program of treatment that would merely aggravate my symptoms ad nauseam).  If I have blame for the church, particularly the leadership, it comes not from their human ignorance (which afflicts us all) but from their refusal to admit to it -- and for the unnecessary pain that this arrogance causes people like me, people who should not be spending hours obsessing and confessing under the illusion that such degrading behavior is guaranteed to make things better (whether here and now or hereafter in another world).  These people need something other than your garden variety forgiveness and absolution, if they are to live happy lives.  The repentance process does not redeem them: it merely crucifies them, over and over until they give it up.  As long as church leaders, particularly those in the governing quorums, fail to acknowledge the inadequacy of their priesthood discipline as a panacea for every kind of soul sickness, they will continue to hurt people like me, and I will continue to recommend that people avoid undergoing their treatment -- just as I would warn the bodily sick against a surgeon who tried to cure all illness with bleeding (or some other ancient treatment whose anecdotal effectiveness in one instance is no guarantee that it won't cause massive harm in another).  Honesty is something I value, and honesty requires I that admit the fact that church discipline has not helped my life: on the contrary, it came pretty close to ruining it.  If it helps you, that is great, but your experience does not cancel out mine.  The drug that helps you may kill me (and vice versa).  People who are like me (rather than you) need to know that I exist, and that church discipline was not good for me.

On Faith.  Kalosieh's concluding statement of faith comes close to mine (pp. 241-242):

My commitment to Catholicism, such as it is, does not endure because of scripture and what theologians refer to as public revelation, i.e., that period of time from the life of Christ up to the death of the last apostle ... I doubt that a genuinely religious person is merely someone who adheres to a system of beliefs (creeds) and a way of life (morals and spirituality) because of recorded events (accurately recorded or not) from millennia past. The very notion that a person's ultimate values should hinge exclusively upon historical events, I find repugnant. I believe that religion continues to live within the human community for reasons over and above that of traditions and cultural education. Religion is inherent in our nature, just as are music, art, dance, wondering, politics, science, etc. Faith is anchored not so much in the accuracy or inaccuracy of historical events, but in the experience of the human community then and now. Neither the solitary individual's experiences nor the historical events recorded in manuscripts enjoy a monopoly on the truths of the religious dimensions in mankind. Just as anyone would be foolish to ignore the history of any issue, idea, problem, or undertaking, so too would a person be foolish not to consult the experiences of the human community with regards to religion and religious experiences.

History, however, does not have a monopoly on the mystical, the experiences of awe and wonder, the drive for meaning and significance. As in the past, so too today the exact nature of those experiences can be questioned, debated, doubted, or believed. I believe that God can and does intervene in our time and space. Whether directly or indirectly, through nature or beyond nature, I am still open to further considerations as to how this is achieved. When I look at history in search of signs and wonders, I discern that the Catholic Church seems to enjoy an abundance of people and places where and to whom those interventions occur. It would be preposterous, however, to imply anything along the lines of God hearing and answering only Catholics, just as it would be unthinkable that only Catholics enjoy the miraculous in their midst ... Ironically, although the Catholic Church is quick to assert the miraculous in the life and times of Jesus and the apostles, she is skeptical of the miraculous in the present era! Mystics who report apparitions, locutions, etc., are said to enjoy "private revelations." The church does not obligate the faithful  to embrace any of these (although after an exhaustive investigation along empirical scientific lines, she may encourage the faithful to assent to them). Wherever it appears that an altered state of consciousness is involved, the church turns skeptical and scientific. She does well to do so because "private revelations" are no guarantee of the whole truth in what is "revealed." For example, predictions made in these altered states of consciousness have proven wrong, erroneous, and sometimes harmful, both to the person who has had the experience and those who believed and took action based upon it. On the other hand, there were also genuine, authentic, wholesome, and helpful revelations that proved their genuineness over time in the life of the recipient and those who believed, e.g., Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima ...

Critics could reduce my commitment to Catholicism solely to my upbringing. But the only way to demonstrate that such is not the case would be for me to renounce it. I would be like the character who lamented that the only way he could prove his freedom was to commit suicide. Ironically, whereas some see me as a staunch Catholic, others see me as outside the fold.  I see myself as neither. I can pray with any religious person.

Today, I am in a position much like that of Kalosieh.  The correlated LDS experience produced by the Corporation of the President has little for me, since I cannot actively participate in meetings where vocal submission to priesthood authority is required (and I find much of the doctrine simply wrong as it is taught, reflecting a poor understanding of history and the human condition, past and present).  But I am still a Mormon.  I use Mormon language.  I have Mormon tastes (even if they don't match what is most popular currently at the Church Office Building).  I have a Mormon history, and the ethical values that I continue to find meaningful have a long history in Mormonism.  (I value personal revelation, integrity, family, hard work, charity, sacrifice, community, etc.  I do not have to believe in the pristine moral purity of Joseph Smith to hold these values.  I do not have to approve modern church leaders' decision to build a great and spacious building in Salt Lake City.  I do not have to think that all priesthood counsel must be followed regardless of circumstances, or consequences.  I do not have to deny my birthright as a rational being.  I do not have to hold beliefs I find untenable or practices I find repugnant.)

I don't necessarily deny the numinous, the mysterious, what some call the divine.  Life contains many things I do not understand.  If we put them all together, assuming they are bound up together somehow, the result might be called God (or the gods).  I have no problem with that, until some of us invoke this semantic patch as an excuse to control others.  My inability to comprehend ultimate reality (God) does not give me authority to dictate to you unilaterally.  In my experience, Mormon priesthood leaders -- all of them -- are men just like me.  (The lack of women in leadership roles is another issue, but we don't have to go there now.)  They have no more right to dictate unilaterally to me in the name of God than I have to dictate to them.  If their counsel works, then I believe it should be followed (just as counsel from a doctor should be followed if the observed result is that patients get better).  If it does not work, then it should not be followed (just a series of deaths in the hospital would curtail the privileges of a rogue physician with a bad idea, or a string of bad luck making him a danger to his patients).  Philosophically speaking, I think I am ultimately more of a materialist and an atheist than Kalosieh: for me, God is more like an emergent principle of order in the universe, an unexplained tendency of matter to form itself into ordered patterns.  Practically and ethically, we are on the same page.  What matters is what you do, how you live your life here and now--not how some great hero of the mythical past lived (or didn't), and submission to authority is no substitute for personal engagement.  You may feel called of God to tell me how to live my life, but that does not mean I feel called to submit to your direction, particularly when it makes me miserable.

Unlike many in my position, I don't mind praying or singing hymns.  I do both, on occasion, and I enjoy it (especially the singing).  In this I am like Kalosieh.  From my perspective, it does not matter what the service is -- whether it is offered to this god or that one, to Jesus or Allah or Ganesh (etc.) -- but what it does in the heart of those who take part.  I can pray with any believer, in any religion: if his worship conduces to the values I share (things like integrity, family, hard work, charity, sacrifice, community, etc.), then I have no reservations about participating.  And I include thoughtful conversations with atheists among some of my most uplifting "spiritual" experiences, in all seriousness.

Reading Kalosieh's book was a special experience for me.  I laughed.  I cried.  I looked over some passages again and again.  In many cases, it was like meeting my Doppelganger, and yet, at the end of the day, we are very different men.  There is beautiful poetry in our likeness proving unlike.  When it is done right, religion gives this poetry a voice: it gives us words to talk about how we are at once alike and different -- unique and particular manifestations of profound generalities that we cannot always see clearly.  Mormonism and Catholicism both offer material for creating particular windows onto an unknown (and wild) reality -- the generic, objective truth that some call God.  Science and humanism can also create windows into this same reality, and they do not make it any less miraculous.  I wish more people understood this.

Martin Luther's Mad Dogs

Eric W. Gritsch.  Reformer without a Church: The Life and Thought of Thomas Muentzer, 1488 [?] - 1525.  Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967.

Hans-Juergen Goertz.  Thomas Muentzer: Apocalyptic, Mystic, and Revolutionary.  Trans. Jocelyn Jacquiery.  Ed. Peter Matheson.  Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993.

Peter Matheson, trans. & ed. The Collected Works of Thomas Muentzer. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988. 

"Truly, the person who has seen Muentzer may claim to have seen the devil incarnate in his very worst raging. Oh, Lord God, wherever such a spirit is abroad among the peasants, it is high time they were destroyed like mad dogs! For the devil too senses the Last Day, and so he stirs up the evil brew to show all the powers of hell at once."  Martin Luther, Ein brieff an die Fuersten zu Sachsen von dem auffrurischen geyst (quoted in Goertz, p. 8).

"One thing pleased me about Muentzer, that from the beginning he sided with the ordinary man, and not with the bigwigs."  John Agricola (in the character of Wolf Schwermer, quoted in Goertz, p. 9). 


I complain a lot about the LDS Church Education System here, so I am happy to be able to say something nice about it now.  Several years ago, before I left to serve a two-year mission in Spain, I attended a really good Institute class.  It was a class in the history of Christianity before Mormonism, with special emphasis on the Reformation and its aftermath.  Where most of the CES classes in scripture that I attended were shallow and boring (confusing fervent testimony with accurate understanding, and operating under the tacit presumption that all students are morons), this one was not.  I was actually interested in this class, which opened my eyes to a lot of information I had not encountered before.  It was really nice to learn something real at church, to come to class and get something other than the obligatory testimony book-ended by "faith-promoting" kitsch.  Even as a believing Mormon, I liked both breadth and depth in my religion: my faith was intellectually stimulating, challenging, and open--the same way my doubt has been.  This class was a breath of fresh air, and it provided my first introduction to Thomas Muentzer, sowing seeds in my mind that are still germinating today.

Thomas Muentzer reminds me a lot of Joseph Smith.  Muentzer participated in the Reformation alongside his contemporary Martin Luther, with whom he associated as a friend and ally before they quarreled over theology.  Preaching a Christian gospel that was at once mystic, anti-clerical, and apocalyptic (with a serious idea of founding heaven on earth), Muentzer anticipated many things in Mormonism.  Like Joseph Smith, he was ultimately put to death by people who found him obnoxious (and like Joseph Smith, he put up a real fight before they took him down: he was taken prisoner on the field at the Battle of Frankenhausen, tortured until he recanted, and ultimately put to death by the German nobility whose authority he threatened).  The one thing he did not do, as far as I can tell, is attempt to coerce young girls into marrying him using religious blackmail (though, like Luther, he went against the religious standard of his day by marrying a runaway nun).  To be honest, this actually makes him more attractive: in many ways, he is what I used to imagine Joseph Smith being--an upstanding moral iconoclast who championed the cause of the common man (weavers, miners, peasants) against that of the establishment exploiting him (Roman Catholic clergy, secular rulers in bed with Lutheran clergy).  Consider the following excerpts from the published work of both men.

Muentzer, "Prague Manifesto" (1521, German version)

"St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3[:3] that the hearts of men are the paper or parchment upon which God with his finger inscribes his immovable will and eternal wisdom. This script not being written in ink, no man can read it ... unless God himself opens the human mind.  This he does in his elect from the very beginning, so that they are no longer uncertain but have invincible testimony from the Holy Spirit" (quoted in Gritsch, p. 56).

Muentzer, "A Manifest Expose of False Faith" (1524, written against Martin Luther)

"If someone had never had sight or sound of the Bible at any time in his life he could still hold the one true Christian faith because of the true teaching of the spirit, just like all those who composed the holy Scripture without any books at all; and he could also be completely certain that he drew such faith from the undeceivable God, not from the cunning devil or from his own human nature" (quoted in Goertz, p. 143). 

Joseph Smith, "Try the Spirits" (editorial published 1 April 1842 in Times and Seasons) 

"If it requires the Spirit of God to know the things of God; and the spirit of the devil can only be unmasked through that medium, then it follows as a natural consequence that unless some person or persons have a communication from God, unfolding to them the operation of the spirit, they must eternally remain ignorant of these principles; for I contend that if one man cannot understand these things but by the Spirit of God, ten thousand men cannot; it is alike out of the reach of the wisdom of the learned, the tongue of the eloquent, the power of the mighty. And we shall at last have to come to this conclusion, whatever we may think of revelation, that without it we can neither know nor understand anything of God, or the devil; and however unwilling the world may be to acknowledge this principle, it is evident from the multifarious creeds and notions concerning this matter that they understand nothing of this principle, and it is equally plain that without a divine communication they must remain in ignorance" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1976], pp. 205-206). 

Like Smith, Muentzer believed in the supremacy of Spirit over Word (a standard trope in Christian mysticism, which Muentzer inherited from old medieval tradition).  For both men, the religious experience is fundamentally an individual encounter with God -- an experientia fidei that need not be mediated by external texts or creeds (though these may prove helpful: Muentzer used the Bible, and Smith did too, adding his own revelations as interpretive guides for the more ancient scripture -- modern equivalents for the ancient midrashim).  Both men had little good to say about the religious teachers of their day.

Muentzer, "Prague Manifesto" (1521, German version)

"For a long time, the world--confused by many sects--has had a tremendous desire for the truth, according to Jer. [4:4].  There were many, and there are still many today, who have thrown the bread, that is, God's word and letter, just as it is thrown to dogs. They have never broken it. Oh, mark it well! They have never broken it for the children. They have never explained the true nature of the fear of God; they have never let it instruct them to become the immovable children of God. This is why Christians--to speak the plain truth--have become poltroons, saying that God has seemingly been struck dumb and no longer speaks with the people. They think it sufficient to read it in books, and then to spit it out like a stork spits out frogs for its young in the nest. They are not like a hen who gathers her young to keep them warm [Cf. Matt. 23:37, 3 Ne 10:5, D&C 10:65, et al]. They refuse to let God's real, true, natural word--which lives in all men--to the hearts of men like a mother offering milk to her child. Instead, they behave like the prophet Balaam [Num. 23-23]; they carry the letter in their mouths, but their hearts are one hundred thousand miles away from it! ... I have taken in the knowledge of this unbearable and evil disease of Christianity through a most diligent study of the ancient church fathers. I have found out that the immaculate, virginal church became a prostitute shortly after the death of the apostles and disciples, due to the scholars who always wanted to be at the top, as Hegesippus and Eusebius testify in [Ecclesiastical History] Book 4, 22. Moreover, no general council, I discovered, ever presented the inviolable word of God. It was all a childish prank. God's will permitted all this so that the work of all men might be revealed. Yet the monkish clergy shall never represent the true church. Instead, the elect friends of God's word will be instructed in prophecy, just as St. Paul was, so that they might really experience how amiably God speaks with his elect. I will, for the sake of God, sacrifice my life in order to reveal this truth" (quoted in Gritsch, p. 57).

"It is the shepherds who just eat, drink, and desire rich parishes. Day and night they are driven by one single ambition: to gorge themselves with food and fiefs, as Ezek. 34[:2] says ... These servants of Satan want to sell a piece of scripture. Yet no man knows whether or not he is worthy of the spirit and love of God! Such is the poison that emerges from the abyss where the priests, these messengers of the devil, reside, filled with the spirit of whoredom and fraud, according to Rev. [3]. They drive away the sheep of God, so that the church is left without a face ... The time of harvest is at hand. That is why God himself has hired me to labor in his harvest. I have sharpened my sickle; my mind is honed for truth; and my lips, hands, skin, hair, heart, soul, body, and life curse unbelief. Christ will give his kingdom to the elect in a little while ... Thomas Muentzer wants to pray, not to a dumb, but to a speaking God" (quoted in Gritsch, p. 58).

Joseph Smith, History of the Church 1.1-5 (1838) = Joseph Smith History (published in the Pearl of Great Price)

"Some time in the second year after our removal to Manchester, there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. It commenced with the Methodists, but soon became general among all the sects in that region of country. Indeed, the whole district of country seemed affected by it, and great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties, which created no small stir and division amongst the people, some crying, “Lo, here!” and others, “Lo, there!” Some were contending for the Methodist faith, some for the Presbyterian, and some for the Baptist.

"For, notwithstanding the great love which the converts to these different faiths expressed at the time of their conversion, and the great zeal manifested by the respective clergy, who were active in getting up and promoting this extraordinary scene of religious feeling, in order to have everybody converted, as they were pleased to call it, let them join what sect they pleased; yet when the converts began to file off, some to one party and some to another, it was seen that the seemingly good feelings of both the priests and the converts were more pretended than real; for a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued—priest contending against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions ...

"While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible. At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to “ask of God,” concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture ...

"My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join. 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.'"

 Joseph Smith, Revelation to His Father (1829) = Doctrine & Covenants 4

"Now behold, a marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men.  Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day. Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work; for behold the field is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul; and faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work.  Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence. Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Amen."

In theory, both Muentzer and Smith recognized that the kingdom of God made men brothers, exalting the common man and bringing down the rulers (no matter what their institutional affiliation: Muentzer was as much opposed to Lutheran authoritarianism in the end as to Catholic).

Thomas Muentzer, "Vindication and Refutation" (written against Martin Luther in 1524)

"O Doctor Liar, you wily fox. With your lies you have saddened the heart of the just man, whom God did not cause to grieve. For you have strengthened the power of the godless evil-doers, so that they could continue on in their old way. Therefore your fate will be that of the fox that has been hunted down; the people will go free and God alone will be their Lord" (quoted in Matheson, p. 350).

Joseph Smith, Prayer and Prophecies from Liberty Jail (1839) = Doctrine & Covenants 121:39-46

"We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Hence many are called, but few are chosen.  No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile--reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy; that he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death.  Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever."

The irony of Joseph Smith renouncing authoritarian excess is not lost on me, by any means.  (Smith should have let the Nauvoo Expositor speak its piece unmolested: in keeping with the words offered here, he said "Amen!" to his own authority when he destroyed that press.  His courtship of Nancy Rigdon and Helen Mar Kimball also falls far short of the ideal he expresses here.)  And I see that there is a positive side to the conciliatory stance Muentzer condemns in Luther (who opposed revolution in the interest of keeping society from unraveling completely).  But when it comes down to the wire, I believe that society works better when people are equals (with nothing but their natural gifts and circumstances to make them stand out from the crowd, for good or ill).  As long as people are going to believe in God, I believe that the Spirit should prevail over the Word: both are often incoherent and idiotic, but the Spirit is more honest, since it recognizes that human interpretation of the divine (whatever that is) is transient, fleeting, subject to error (and proof: people find it easier to resist the Spirit than the Word, I think).

Even more important, I stand against authoritarian big-wigs using their accidental social clout to dictate to the little guy, telling him what to believe and where to put his hard-earned livelihood (in their pocket, naturally, so that they can build the world's most expensive shopping mall).  I aspire to a society where individuals encounter reality (God) for themselves and make their own decisions (imposing on one another by persuasion that does not include blatant lies or renounce reasonable compromise).

In short, the Mormonism to which I converted looks a lot like the Christianity of Thomas Muentzer.  It had its problems: the eschatology was bad, but that came straight from some of the dumbest portions of Scripture, portions which continue to addle the minds of Christians today.  But it was not entirely bad: it embraced revelation, innovation, and a radical identity between spirit and flesh (Muentzer and Smith both thought that Christian doctrine needed to be applied in the world as it exists now, that the current order of things should not be accepted as God's inalterable will: I agree).  When I wear the hat of the believing Christian, I still think in the tradition of Muentzer and Smith (particularly in their mysticism and their anti-clericalism / anti-authoritarianism).  The fact that they both ended up falling short of the high ideals they espoused does not mean that they offered the world nothing useful.  The fact that both of them led failed rebellions against the orthodoxies of their day does not mean that those orthodoxies were without fault.

I find Thomas Muentzer interesting enough that I may post more about him in time.