Saints: The Standard of Truth Reviewed

As a former member of the LDS church who lost his faith largely over issues in LDS history, I find it interesting to put my finger on the pulse of how they are telling their story. So, I decided to read this book.

First off, the narrative style of this history book is engaging and very readable. The personal stories are inspiring and it was nice to see that the church is becoming more comfortable talking about things that have been, well, glossed over in the past. Some might say that they were hidden. For example, we see straightforward acknowledgments that Joseph Smith smoked and drank throughout his life, or that he was aware of and approved of the actions of the Danites in Missouri. The book also contextualizes a lot of the history, albeit in a still slanted way. When I was reading LDS history books I was once told, "You wouldn't go to a Ford dealership to get good information on a Chevrolet, would you?" Well, I had to admit that I wouldn't but I also had to point out that Chevrolet dealerships aren't the best place for unbiased information on Chevrolets either. This book is a Chevrolet dealership's attempt at more candor about their own cars after having been rocked with several large and public recalls. I don't know, that's the best metaphor I can come up with.

A good example of this is the treatment of the Missouri Mormon War. We get a very detailed and moving account of the Haun's Mill Massacre. And don't get me wrong, that was a truly horrifying event; true evil in action by the men who committed those actions. But when we get to the Battle of Crooked River, we don't get an account of the capture and vicious mutilation of Samuel Tarwater by the Mormon combatants. That part gets skipped. And that's a real shame because this one-sided storytelling a really big part of what led me out of this church. This book (like the church history stories I listened to as a small child) portrays the history as a cosmic battle between God and Satan. It is a childish, black-and-white way of looking at the world. Everything is couched in that context and the real people on both sides of the conflict (with their own real hopes, fears, and dreams) get lost. Their real stories are so much more interesting and understandable when you look at them from their real points of view in a more balanced way. This history book is more balanced than any the church has ever produced, but it is not at the point where it could be considered balanced. This is the Chevrolet salesman who is trying to acknowledge some of what everyone knows about his cars because he knows it will be insulting not to.

I actually enjoyed it quite a bit for the first 2/3 of the book. I did get frustrated toward the end when the book started to hit some of my least favorite apologetics for Joseph Smith. It is clear that the church is still very uncomfortable facing some aspects of Joseph Smith's life. For example, you won't find any accounts of when Joseph became physically violent with people, when he asked for people's wives to test their loyalty, his high-pressure marriage proposals to foster daughters, when he ruined the reputations of women who refused polygamous proposals, how Joseph made his money, etc. "Some things that are true are not very useful," I guess.

According to the book, Joseph's denials of "polygamy" and "spiritual wifery" are okay because of his careful wording. Apparently, lying is acceptable as long as you carefully word your lies. I almost want to go to a temple recommend interview so I can say, "What a thing it is to be accused of drinking coffee when I can't find a mug in my hand! I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers!" Apparently, that is totally honest. Oh brother. It would be one thing if the church were making the argument that Joseph had to lie to protect people's lives (I would lie to save Anne Frank from the gas chamber, that's not a sin). But that is not the argument they are making. They are making the argument that lying through word games is not dishonest, and they sacrifice their morals to make Joseph Smith look better. It's weird. And they do it in the Nauvoo polygamy Gospel Topics essay too.

Continuing on with the bizarre Joseph Smith apologetics, at one point the book asserts that Joseph didn't have many rules governing the practice of polygamy. However, if I am not mistaken, D&C 132 has a whole bunch of really specific rules about polygamy, and this is the revelation he supposedly received in the 1830s that he referred to but only produced much later. The revelation starts out with God himself stating, "My house is a house of order" followed by all of the super-specific rules about polygamy. No, the issue isn't that Joseph lacked rules, it is that Joseph had a whole bunch of uber-specific rules and then he went out and did a whole bunch of other, different weird shit (pardon my french). And you won't find out about any of that weirdness from this book. You'll get just enough from this book so that you can think you know what's really going on, but you don't.

At another point, the book recounts a time where Joseph, Emma, and Emily Partridge are present in a situation where Emma finally decides to go along with polygamy and chooses Emily to marry Joseph. Then the book states that *Emily* decides not to tell Emma that she already married Joseph to spare Emma's feelings. I almost screamed at the book, "Emily decided?!?! We're going to blame this lie on Emily now? What about Emma's fucking lying gutless wonder of a husband?" Yeah, sorry. That part really pissed me off. Poor passive victim Joseph. He'd do the right thing if only someone would just let him. If only teenage Emily would have just set things right with all of the (much more powerful) adults in the room. Barf.

But I can see why the church is so reluctant to really go into depth on the life of Joseph Smith. In the end, I left the church because I felt compelled to choose between a Monster Mormon God that orchestrated Joseph's actions and a Monster Joseph Smith. The facts on the ground indicate that at least one of them is a monster. Dealing with a Monster Joseph Smith was more comfortable and made more sense to me in the end. It hurt when I finally realized that if I had lived near Joseph Smith in his time, I would never want my wife or daughters anywhere near him. God, he was such a hero to me when I was young.

Contrasting the whitewashing of Joseph is the treatment of William Law. I guess I get it, the church needs to see him as a top-ranking general in Satan's army, otherwise the story reflects badly on Joseph. But the fact is, if you read Willam Law's story from his point of view, his actions don't seem all that unreasonable. Law spends years defending Joseph from "vicious lies" about polygamy only to find out that they are true. I can empathize with the feeling of that betrayal and can totally see how that would lead to anger and a falling out and an attempt to set the record straight in print (complete with angry name-calling). Joseph was playing with fire having a secret class of polygamists in the church while lying by omission (and sometimes explicitly) to the rest.

When reading this book, I read about all sorts of terrible things that Law did that I had never heard about in all of my LDS history reading. So I followed the footnotes and read the accounts by some guy in the late 1800s in Utah who said he went on all of these secret missions as directed by Joseph Smith and gathered all this dirt on William Law and witnessed him doing all sorts of terrible things. I'm pretty sure I know why no other historian had brought up these "facts." It's because all of it reads like some old guy making up stories to get attention. Some old guy that nobody has ever heard of just happens to have been Joseph's best friend and went on secret missions 40 years ago and didn't tell anybody until the late 1800s... My narcissistic grandfather used to tell those kinds of stories and they were all bullshit.

Hey, but I guess it could have happened, right? I don't know for sure this old guy is lying. It sure reads like it, but I don't know for sure 100%. One thing I do know for sure is that this book would have never taken a disparaging comment about Joseph Smith as fact with flimsy evidence like this. There are two standards of evidence. If someone says something good about Joseph Smith or bad about William Law, the bar is low. The evidence is probably true. If someone says something bad about Joseph or good about William Law, the bar is high and the evidence is probably false. This is a good method to use to reinforce a childish, black-and-white view of the world, but not a good way to figure out the interesting story of what really probably happened, and certainly not a good way to figure out if you are wrong.

Overall, I'd much rather read this than "Our Heritage." It's way more interesting and balanced than that, but it still isn't anywhere near as balanced as something from a top-notch historian who is trying their best to apply consistent standards of evidence to figure out what most probably happened. If you really want to understand what went on, you need to find someone like that to read. If you want to reinforce a childish black-and-white view of the history of the LDS church but learn more than what you can get in any other book published by the church, this is the book for you.

*Justice* vs *Mercy* in LDS Theology

So why am I writing about this? Despite not believing LDS theology anymore, I still get these itches to deconstruct my past fundamentalist worldview. Writing it out is good therapy. It's like having been raised in a religion that believes that Star Trek is real, truly believing it was real for a few decades and then suddenly realizing that it isn't. (Sorry if that sounds insulting. I can't think of a less-insulting way to describe how it feels to me.) Sometimes I just get an overwhelming desire to write out why two-dimensional space battles with sounds and lasers that travel like slow projectiles make no sense or that "plasma conduit" is an overused meaningless thought-terminating cliché. Probably nobody cares what I think about this and they probably shouldn't. But it feels good to write about all this stuff and try to unpack it anyway. It was such a big part of my life for so long and I did firmly believed it until I was 32 years old. Plus, these writings sometimes lead to interesting conversations with friends when I share my thoughts. I hope I don't offend anyone with anything I write and I'd love to discuss this stuff with anyone who can discuss ideas without taking criticism of ideas personally.

To get started, what is the *Justice* vs *Mercy* dichotomy in LDS theology? Where does it come from? Why did I put asterisks around these words? Well, *Justice* vs *Mercy* is all a part of the justification for atonement theology. It holds that *Justice* (a cosmic law of sorts) requires that any sin (even the smallest) incurs an infinite debt that the perpetrator cannot possibly pay and will be punished for permanently. The only possible way to pay the debt is to have a sinless person be an infinite sacrifice. This satisfies the infinite debt and the person who sinned then is required to do some things by Jesus (the infinite sacrifice) to take advantage of their debt being paid off. I put asterisks around the theological concepts to separate them from their regular dictionary definitions, which I will also use and hopefully it won't be too confusing because they will look different.

I probably need to stop at this point and point out some background information. The *Justice* vs *Mercy* dichotomy is a concept that won't be totally unfamiliar to some flavors of Christianity but in LDS theology they are really fleshed out in the Book of Mormon in Alma Chapter 42. Reading that is a good refresher of the LDS stance. Also, non-LDS readers should probably know that LDS theology states that God and Jesus are separate beings. LDS people believe in a non-Trinitarian godhead, so when I talk about God and Jesus as if they are entirely separate, that is because that is how I was raised and that is the theology I am discussing today.

So as a summary, LDS theology posits that even the smallest of sins forces the sinner to incur an infinite debt with God. Jesus then steps in and pays that debt to God and then renegotiates the terms of the debt with the sinner in a more merciful way. *Justice* is satisfied because the infinite payment gets made.

The problem I see is that this is a "turtles all the way down" argument. It doesn't actually explain anything. It just pushes the problem down lower in the foundation where it isn't as visible. Why does the tiniest of sins force us to incur an infinite debt with God (which seems unjust)? Not answered. If Jesus can forgive the debt after paying it, why can't God just forgive the debt in the first place? Not answered. Why is God bound by a seemingly unjust law of *Justice* that doesn't allow him to forgive debts that are owed to him? Not answered. We are left with more quenstions than when we started.

Now just because we don't understand how the *Justice* vs *Mercy* dichotomy works, doesn't mean it isn't true. It could very well be, but it seems very strange that a perfect, just, and loving God would expect us to believe something that we can't possibly understand. An "Alpha God" might do that, but not a loving God.

The thing is, justice and mercy are not laws of physics but guiding moral principles. As such they must have moral utility in order to make any moral sense.

*Justice* that condemns everyone with an infinite punishment for the smallest (and finite) infractions doesn't seem just (fair, deserved). An atonement shouldn't be necessary to make justice just and fair. It should be baked in there to start with. Again, where does *Justice* come from? How and why does it bind God? No answers.

Additionally, the concept and very existence of *Justice* seems to impair self-improvement since it can easily lead to shame, hopelessness, and perfectionism especially with certain personality types (e.g. people who suffer from scrupulosity) since it states that even the smallest infractions makes one fundamentally unacceptable to God. It also leads people to lose track of the relative importance of large moral principles like kindness and leads to Pharisaical moral codes. See this talk from ElderBednar, where he gives an example of a man who broke up with a young woman because she didn't take out a second pair of earrings when she was told to, and then to my puzzlement he states that it isn't about earrings. Apparently it is about a person's willingness to make minutiae important. I also once read a Facebook post of the BYUI president chastising people for wearing pants that show ankle on campus. But really, why not? If all unatoned infractions lead to infinite punishment, there is really not much basis to say that one sin is much worse than another. This is actually the rationale in the American justice system for not giving the death penalty admittedly very heinous crimes like rape. You don't want a rapist to conclude that there is no down side to murdering their victims after perpetrating rape (as much as we would like as harsh a punishment as possible for rapists). Increasing seriousness of crime deserves increasing seriousness of punishment. At least, that should be the goal if the punishments are to deter further crimes.

Unfortunately, the skewing of moral priorities has happened in the LDS temple recommend interview over time. There is absolutely no question asking if the person is kind to others (the second most important moral principle, according to Jesus) but questions about things like coffee and tea consumption are viewed as extremely morally important. Let me say that again because it still mystifies me; temple worthiness interviewers don't ask about kindness! This seems at odds with the overarching messages in the New Testament like those of Jesus telling people to question the religious dogma of the time and focus on kindness to people over minutiae. Do the Pharisees reign again? I think that case can be made.

Now one thing that seems interesting to me is that LDS theology seems to be mixing pecuniary(money)/civil justice and criminal/moral justice as if they were the same thing. They are not. Let's clarify things.

If I sign a contract with someone and I decide to release the other party from their obligations in the contract, there is no miscarriage of justice. I am free to do that (and so is God). Also, a scenario where someone steps in and pays a debt for someone else is perfectly just, and the person who pays the debt could do that as part of a new contract. Nothing unjust there.

However, if someone commits a moral crime against me (and it seems to make more sense to classify sins as moral crimes, not breaches of contract), we can't substitute the punishment on someone else. For example, let's say that I am out for a walk one day and a guy named Doug jumps out of a bush and gives me a savage beating and then runs off. Someone films it and Doug is convicted in court. At the sentencing, a guy named Sam who has never broken the law jumps up in court and volunteers to go to jail for Doug. If the judge were to accept that, would moral justice be satisfied with that solution?

Thomas Paine says it better than I ever could in The Age of Reason: 

"If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge."

The LDS church taught me when I was young that the Holy Ghost would confirm truths to me, probably through my feelings. The Holy Ghost has utterly failed to confirm the truth of *Justice* vs *Mercy* to me after decades of opportunity but this does not mean that I haven't felt confirmatory feelings of peace with respect to justice and mercy.

When reading Les Miserables, I felt deep in my soul that many times justice and mercy are one and the same; that they are not non-overlapping circles on a Venn diagram.

Recently I read A Monster Calls, a book about a young boy named Connor dealing with the fear of his mother's impending death. Under these difficult circumstances, he acts out by beating up a schoolyard bully and by breaking some of his grandmother's possessions. In each instance he is surprised that no one wants to punish him. In each case, when he asks them why they aren't going to punish him, the person in authority asks him, "What could possibly be the point?" I felt the truth of that deep in my bones.

And that is my main sticking point with respect to *Justice* in LDS theology. What could possibly be the point of small finite infractions incurring an infinite debt with God? *Justice* creates the (unjust) problem, requiring a theological Rube Goldberg machine to fix it. Without *Justice*, there is no problem. God is painted as the ultimate bureaucrat or a slave to some ultimate bureaucracy. *Justice* makes no sense and explains nothing.

It would make much more sense for a loving God to simply forgive what warrants forgiving and mete out punishments that are proportional to the crime with the purpose of teaching. After all, a Father/Mother's love for a child is the only metaphor I can use to understand a deity's love for mankind, and that is how I would treat my children. Am I better than God?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Post Script: A Trinitarian view of God actually makes this problem seem much smaller than the non-Trinitarian view of God in LDS theology. In the Trinitarian view, God and Jesus are somewhat the same entity so you have God sacrificing himself to make things right. Some (but not all) of the problems disappear.

Interestingly, if you look at the historical record in the early LDS church the theology seems to have started out as Trinitarian and then morphed into the theology of "three separate beings." For more information, see the Lectures on Faith, the original Book of Mormon text that refers to Mary as "The Mother of God" (later edited to say "The Mother of the Son of God") and the lack of any written references to "three separate beings" theology in any sources in the first few years of the LDS church. I think that is the background that makes the multiple versions of the first vision disturbing to the faith of some people. However, I think that Alma 42 was written with a Trinitarian view of the Godhead in mind, so it probably didn't originally have as much baggage as it came to have later, as the theology evolved.