"And when my brethren saw that I was about to build a ship, they began to murmur against me, saying: Our brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship; yea, and he also thinketh that he can cross these great waters."
There was a very specific reason Laman and Lemuel were wary of building a boat.
Before he was a prophet, when his first four sons were still only boys, Lehi had claimed divine inspiration for the first time. He had been doing well trading along the camel routes from Arabia to Egypt--and then one day he came home and announced that God wanted him to build a ship and break into the lucrative trade in cedar from Lebanon.
Lehi threw his energy into the project with a religious intensity, and the boys got excited like they'd never been before. But getting the right permits and finding the right workers was hard; expenses built up fast and Lehi had to take out big loans; the ship almost didn't get built and almost as soon as the ship was built, there was a market collapse in Egypt and not much room for Lehi in the cedar trade anymore; finally, after a bad storm in the harbor, the ship sank.
It was the family's worst disaster. Lehi had to work extra hard and take long trade trips during Laman and Lemuel's early teenage years to bring the family fortunes back again.
So when Nephi told them God wanted another boat, Laman and Lemuel mocked him. To them, memories of the first boat meant that God didn't really get involved in nautical issues.
In Nephi's memory, though, the first boat was associated positively with his father's early faith. And it set a precedent for God's later command.
The difference between the brothers was in how they interpreted their early life experience.
(A variation on this story is also told in which the first shipbuilder is not Lehi, but Joseph Smith, while the brothers are not Laman, Lemuel, Nephi, and Sam but Warren Parrish, David Whitmer, Brigham Young, and Wilford Woodruff. In that version, the ship is not a ship, but rather the Kirtland Bank.)
Showing posts with label Church History Thursdays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church History Thursdays. Show all posts
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Friday, December 4, 2009
J.S. Quote
Ran across this quote from Joseph Smith, quoted in George M. Hinkle's testimony against him in Missouri in 1839:
"I have heard Joseph Smith, jr. say that he believed Mahomet was a good man; that the Koran was not a true thing, but the world belied Mahomet, as they had belied him, and that Mahomet was a true prophet."
I wouldn't ordinarily put a lot of confidence in someone's politically motivated testimony against Joseph Smith, but this one is part of a larger pattern. Numerous individuals in 1838 and 1839 testified that Joseph had said something positive about Muhammad, or in which he identified himself with Muhammad. According to Thomas Marsh and Orson Hyde, who left the church just before the 1838 violence, Joseph Smith said that if his persecutors wouldn't leave him alone, he would become a second Muhammad and leave a trail of blood to the Pacific.
In nineteenth-century America, of course, comparing a religious leader to Muhammad was a worse slur, even, than comparing a religious leader to the Pope, which was the more politically correct way of accusing someone of unspeakable conspiracies.
From the 21st century, though, I find myself wondering what Joseph Smith actually said and whether there was a surprising degree of openness and fair-mindedness to it. Was he trying to say that early Islamic military history was not simply aggressive and coercive, but more deeply a response to bitter persecution? Did his perspective allow for important religious values to have been transmitted by God to a non-Christian faith? (Times have changed a great deal--when later LDS prophets issued a proclamation espousing such views in the 1970s, no one testified against them in court over it.) Did he simply feel a certain affinity for anyone as hated as Muhammad?
We may never know. But it seems probable that he did, in fact, say something and that several of his followers, bound too tightly in the mentality of their era's culture, grew disaffected over it. Perhaps the lesson of this incident as that we ought to be cautious not to let values from our own 21st-century culture tear us away from the values God's spirit has spoken to our souls.
"I have heard Joseph Smith, jr. say that he believed Mahomet was a good man; that the Koran was not a true thing, but the world belied Mahomet, as they had belied him, and that Mahomet was a true prophet."
I wouldn't ordinarily put a lot of confidence in someone's politically motivated testimony against Joseph Smith, but this one is part of a larger pattern. Numerous individuals in 1838 and 1839 testified that Joseph had said something positive about Muhammad, or in which he identified himself with Muhammad. According to Thomas Marsh and Orson Hyde, who left the church just before the 1838 violence, Joseph Smith said that if his persecutors wouldn't leave him alone, he would become a second Muhammad and leave a trail of blood to the Pacific.
In nineteenth-century America, of course, comparing a religious leader to Muhammad was a worse slur, even, than comparing a religious leader to the Pope, which was the more politically correct way of accusing someone of unspeakable conspiracies.
From the 21st century, though, I find myself wondering what Joseph Smith actually said and whether there was a surprising degree of openness and fair-mindedness to it. Was he trying to say that early Islamic military history was not simply aggressive and coercive, but more deeply a response to bitter persecution? Did his perspective allow for important religious values to have been transmitted by God to a non-Christian faith? (Times have changed a great deal--when later LDS prophets issued a proclamation espousing such views in the 1970s, no one testified against them in court over it.) Did he simply feel a certain affinity for anyone as hated as Muhammad?
We may never know. But it seems probable that he did, in fact, say something and that several of his followers, bound too tightly in the mentality of their era's culture, grew disaffected over it. Perhaps the lesson of this incident as that we ought to be cautious not to let values from our own 21st-century culture tear us away from the values God's spirit has spoken to our souls.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Conference History Notes
Simon Peter and Joseph Smith
Imagine my surprise when Elder Callister used a list of Peter's apparent weaknesses to introduce a talk on Joseph Smith--the same parallel that started this blog's church history series! I think Elder Callister powerfully articulated the counter-productivity of allowing Joseph's imperfections to keep us from enjoying the rich doctrines of the Restoration. I do think, though, that we'd be well-served not simply by overlooking Joseph's faults/failures, but by treating them as a more important part of a dynamic experience of spiritual growth that we can learn from. The stories of Peter's mistakes, after all, are valuable parts of the scripture--they're not something to overlook, but to treasure!
We don't need Joseph Smith to be an example of what's right. We can let him be an example of how to learn and grow--sometimes by being wrong and making significant mistakes--without compromising our belief in him as a prophet.
The Buttercream Gang
President Monson also invoked the church's past by relating a story about Thomas B. Marsh. This story has endured for the last century and a half, I think, because it speaks an important truth about the dangers of anger. That utility has kept alive the story even though it is probably not historically accurate.
Where did the story come from? The first historical reference I've found to it is from George A. Smith in the late 1850s, roughly twenty years after the fact and in a completely different environment from which some of the complexities of the past could be forgotten. Maybe the events George A. Smith describes did take place in some form--although I'd be surprised if a case that caused so much trouble between the leading apostle and the church really got all the way to the First Presidency without anyone writing about it. I think it's just as likely that the Marshes were never involved in a dispute over butter at all--maybe someone else had a butter dispute that George A. Smith later misremembered as involving the Marshes (just as members today sometimes quote lines from inspirational poems thinking that they are in the scriptures, or attribute pieces of wisdom to some anonymous General Authority).
Thomas B. Marsh did leave the church in 1838 and did swear an affidavit--preserved today in Missouri state archives--against Joseph Smith. But considering the context of the times, it seems much more likely that he was concerned about the aggressive military strategy and rhetoric the Mormon community took in the early and middle stages of the "Mormon War." Several thoughtful Mormons correctly predicted that an aggressive defense would prove "disastrous"--rather than protecting the community as intended, it resulted in Governor Boggs' infamous extermination order. Marsh and others who saw this miscalculation tried to escape from a Mormon community they saw as both desperate and doomed. In Marsh's case, swearing an affidavit against Joseph Smith publicly distanced him from the church enough that he could live in peace in the state and enjoy its protection of his constitutional rights. He saw a serious fault in Mormonism, bailed out, and avoided the harsh consequence of being driven from the state...
...but Mormonism didn't die. The Saints lost most of their property to their Missouri persecutors once again and walked across the frozen ground into Iowa and Illinois to think about their future. The Prophet was sent to prison in Liberty, reflected on what had gone wrong, and composed what is probably the most profound letter in Mormon history. Spring came, things changed, the Saints started over again and in a few years the movement was strong enough to face another set of crises.
Cort likes to say that the church is like a great stone rolling down a mountain and from time to time, it hits up against something hard and some pride or errors are knocked off--but the stone keeps rolling, keeps growing smoother, until one day it will be what God wants it to ultimately be.
Sometimes we, like the historical Thomas Marsh, see real problems with the course the church takes or the tenor of church culture and want to break ourselves off from the stone before it collides painfully with the consequences of its own awkwardness. And yet, says Cort, if we do we lose the momentum that comes from being part of a collective gathered by God. We miss the growth that comes through sharing the very pain we have foreseen and wished to avoid.
In 1857, Thomas Marsh sought out and was rebaptized into the church. He realized what he had missed by believing too much in his fears about what could result from a church course that was legimitately dangerous.
Did the pain he suffered from 1838-1857 in some way stand in for the pain he could have learned from had he remained with the Saints? I do not see Marsh as a pathetic figure: I see him as someone whose courage and humility ultimately made up for his mistakes.
And somewhere on the other side of the veil, where he is probably sharing the gospel with the spirits of his ancestors, I imagine Thomas Marsh happy.
Imagine my surprise when Elder Callister used a list of Peter's apparent weaknesses to introduce a talk on Joseph Smith--the same parallel that started this blog's church history series! I think Elder Callister powerfully articulated the counter-productivity of allowing Joseph's imperfections to keep us from enjoying the rich doctrines of the Restoration. I do think, though, that we'd be well-served not simply by overlooking Joseph's faults/failures, but by treating them as a more important part of a dynamic experience of spiritual growth that we can learn from. The stories of Peter's mistakes, after all, are valuable parts of the scripture--they're not something to overlook, but to treasure!
We don't need Joseph Smith to be an example of what's right. We can let him be an example of how to learn and grow--sometimes by being wrong and making significant mistakes--without compromising our belief in him as a prophet.
The Buttercream Gang
President Monson also invoked the church's past by relating a story about Thomas B. Marsh. This story has endured for the last century and a half, I think, because it speaks an important truth about the dangers of anger. That utility has kept alive the story even though it is probably not historically accurate.
Where did the story come from? The first historical reference I've found to it is from George A. Smith in the late 1850s, roughly twenty years after the fact and in a completely different environment from which some of the complexities of the past could be forgotten. Maybe the events George A. Smith describes did take place in some form--although I'd be surprised if a case that caused so much trouble between the leading apostle and the church really got all the way to the First Presidency without anyone writing about it. I think it's just as likely that the Marshes were never involved in a dispute over butter at all--maybe someone else had a butter dispute that George A. Smith later misremembered as involving the Marshes (just as members today sometimes quote lines from inspirational poems thinking that they are in the scriptures, or attribute pieces of wisdom to some anonymous General Authority).
Thomas B. Marsh did leave the church in 1838 and did swear an affidavit--preserved today in Missouri state archives--against Joseph Smith. But considering the context of the times, it seems much more likely that he was concerned about the aggressive military strategy and rhetoric the Mormon community took in the early and middle stages of the "Mormon War." Several thoughtful Mormons correctly predicted that an aggressive defense would prove "disastrous"--rather than protecting the community as intended, it resulted in Governor Boggs' infamous extermination order. Marsh and others who saw this miscalculation tried to escape from a Mormon community they saw as both desperate and doomed. In Marsh's case, swearing an affidavit against Joseph Smith publicly distanced him from the church enough that he could live in peace in the state and enjoy its protection of his constitutional rights. He saw a serious fault in Mormonism, bailed out, and avoided the harsh consequence of being driven from the state...
...but Mormonism didn't die. The Saints lost most of their property to their Missouri persecutors once again and walked across the frozen ground into Iowa and Illinois to think about their future. The Prophet was sent to prison in Liberty, reflected on what had gone wrong, and composed what is probably the most profound letter in Mormon history. Spring came, things changed, the Saints started over again and in a few years the movement was strong enough to face another set of crises.
Cort likes to say that the church is like a great stone rolling down a mountain and from time to time, it hits up against something hard and some pride or errors are knocked off--but the stone keeps rolling, keeps growing smoother, until one day it will be what God wants it to ultimately be.
Sometimes we, like the historical Thomas Marsh, see real problems with the course the church takes or the tenor of church culture and want to break ourselves off from the stone before it collides painfully with the consequences of its own awkwardness. And yet, says Cort, if we do we lose the momentum that comes from being part of a collective gathered by God. We miss the growth that comes through sharing the very pain we have foreseen and wished to avoid.
In 1857, Thomas Marsh sought out and was rebaptized into the church. He realized what he had missed by believing too much in his fears about what could result from a church course that was legimitately dangerous.
Did the pain he suffered from 1838-1857 in some way stand in for the pain he could have learned from had he remained with the Saints? I do not see Marsh as a pathetic figure: I see him as someone whose courage and humility ultimately made up for his mistakes.
And somewhere on the other side of the veil, where he is probably sharing the gospel with the spirits of his ancestors, I imagine Thomas Marsh happy.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
An Apology and Some Notes
Thanks to the pressures of grad school (including a time- and energy-consuming struggle to get my online work taken seriously as creative nonfiction), I haven't been able to draft the longer essays I'd like to do for Church History Thursdays. If I get authorization to use these blogs for a thesis project, I'll be able to write more consistently again--wish me luck!
For now, I'll leave some notes about things I'd like to discuss to at least give you some idea where we're headed:
1) I think Joseph Smith made mistakes that contributed to discontent over the Fall of the Kirtland Bank--and that we can learn something productive from recognizing both what mistakes he might have made and what positive long-term affects the Kirtland Bank experience had on the church in spite of its flawed execution.
2) You may have heard that Joseph Smith once got into a fist-fight with an Apostle--who also happened to be his brother. Could the human details of this story become part of our understanding of a dynamic restoration?
3) Missouri's "Mormon War," in which the Governor issued an order authorizing the extermination and/or forced removal of all Mormons from the state, figures prominently in LDS cultural memory. I'd like to speculate on what might have motivated Joseph Smith, Lyman Wight, and Thomas Marsh to take three separate courses before and during the war, each of them problematic. I'd also like to talk about how my rougher version of history can be spiritually instructive today.
Thank you for your patience thus far--hopefully it will be rewarded in the near future.
For now, I'll leave some notes about things I'd like to discuss to at least give you some idea where we're headed:
1) I think Joseph Smith made mistakes that contributed to discontent over the Fall of the Kirtland Bank--and that we can learn something productive from recognizing both what mistakes he might have made and what positive long-term affects the Kirtland Bank experience had on the church in spite of its flawed execution.
2) You may have heard that Joseph Smith once got into a fist-fight with an Apostle--who also happened to be his brother. Could the human details of this story become part of our understanding of a dynamic restoration?
3) Missouri's "Mormon War," in which the Governor issued an order authorizing the extermination and/or forced removal of all Mormons from the state, figures prominently in LDS cultural memory. I'd like to speculate on what might have motivated Joseph Smith, Lyman Wight, and Thomas Marsh to take three separate courses before and during the war, each of them problematic. I'd also like to talk about how my rougher version of history can be spiritually instructive today.
Thank you for your patience thus far--hopefully it will be rewarded in the near future.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
A Little Help from My Friends
I'll borrow my discussion on Church History this week from a few friends:
Cort once told me that the topical organization of the Joseph Smith priesthood/relief society manual gave him the sense that Joseph Smith more or less understood how the church and gospel were supposed to work all along. Only after getting hired as a Research Assistant for the Joseph Smith Papers Project did he begin to understand how principles unfolded more gradually, and that Joseph went through the changes along with everyone else. He thinks it's important to learn to see Joseph Smith as being affected by the Restoration instead of simply as affecting the Restoration.
Joe Darowski pointed out that sometimes we think of the Restoration as Joseph Smith's story, when in fact it is God's story, and Joseph Smith is one of many characters and movements that God wove into it.
Cort once told me that the topical organization of the Joseph Smith priesthood/relief society manual gave him the sense that Joseph Smith more or less understood how the church and gospel were supposed to work all along. Only after getting hired as a Research Assistant for the Joseph Smith Papers Project did he begin to understand how principles unfolded more gradually, and that Joseph went through the changes along with everyone else. He thinks it's important to learn to see Joseph Smith as being affected by the Restoration instead of simply as affecting the Restoration.
Joe Darowski pointed out that sometimes we think of the Restoration as Joseph Smith's story, when in fact it is God's story, and Joseph Smith is one of many characters and movements that God wove into it.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
False Midrashim and the Fall of the Kirtland Bank (part one)
I’ve heard an interesting false midrash on D&C 104: 17 several times now. It goes that the phrase “the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare” means that we don’t need to worry about things like future oil shortages because, after all, God said there would be enough.
I first heard this from a student in a
But who really wants to listen to me? Wouldn’t it be more righteous to have the faith to believe that a God who can split the water move mountains build planets can give us a little extra oil just for our faith?
It’s interesting: Mormonism’s commitment to balancing faith, works, and grace actually may be closer to productive paradox. We don’t believe in 33% faith, 33% works, 33% grace, we believe in at least 100% of each. Mormons should have:
-absolute faith in a living God’s miraculous power
-a standard of ethical and moral living that moves us toward our dream of Zion
-a total ability to let go sometimes and believe that God is great enough to save us
This is wonderful, but sometimes leaves us vulnerable to false ideas that appeal to, say, our sense of faith or righteousness. Relying on faith, we sometimes fail to be sufficiently faithful as stewards (an assignment that requires our vigilance and intelligence).
That’s what happens with the false midrash that teaches sufficient means limitless.
Marvin Hill argues it may be what happened with the Kirtland Bank, but works to distance Joseph Smith from such confusion. Next week, I’ll talk about why it’s OK to think that Joseph might have made the same error, and had to learn this lesson along with everyone else.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Money (Last Thursday's Overdue Post)
Joseph Smith tells us in his 1838 history (the one we keep in the Pearl of Great Price) that Moroni warned him specifically that Satan would use the "indigent circumstances" of his father's family to tempt him to use the plates to get rich. (JS-H 1: 46) Moroni neglected to mention that publishing the translation of the plate's text would cost more than Joseph had ever owned in his life. He also didn't say anything about how that significant publication cost would only be the beginning of a long succession of financial demands that revealed projects would place on Joseph and those who believed the Book's words.
While we're intellectually aware that the early church was pretty poor, I don't know that we modern saints often consider how that constant back-of-the-mind gnawing of money worries may have influenced Joseph Smith. He does not appear to have tried to scale back plans from what he thought the Lord wanted because of a shortage of resources. He may have made some unwise choices, though, in trying to make the means sufficient for the visions he cherished.
A few thoughts:
-Was Joseph worrying about who would fund the printing of the Book of Mormon when he asked God again and again whether he could lend the 160 pages to Martin Harris? It's one matter to take "no" for an answer. It's quite another to wonder if you're going to alienate the only person with any significant financial means who believes in what you're doing. Did Joseph stay up late worrying about how his relatively wealthy friend Martin Harris would feel if he kept saying no? Did he pray a little too insistently before falling back asleep?
-The Saints sacrificed a great deal to contribute toward the building of the House of the Lord in Kirtland. Was Joseph trying too hard to generate money in other ways to fund church projects after the temple's dedication? Certainly, he appreciated sacrifices, but were there ever points when he wished he could stop asking people for money? Or when he figured they'd sacrificed enough and should be able to live in greater prospertity already?
-The Saints, under Joseph's direction, had refused to sell land after they were driven from Jackson County in 1833--they felt that to do so would be denying their faith in God's revelation of Jackson County as a sacred place. By 1838, they were settled outside Jackson County and facing pressure to move again. Joseph was still trying to pay debts left from his failed business ventures in Kirtland. Did he want too desperately to stay in a place where he hoped to establish prosperity and let some saints go too far in trying to protect it?
I don't know to what extent these are accurate and productive readings of each situation, but I do think that Joseph's complicated relationship with money deserves some attention in the way faithful Latter-day Saints think about him and the kinds of challenges he faced.
While we're intellectually aware that the early church was pretty poor, I don't know that we modern saints often consider how that constant back-of-the-mind gnawing of money worries may have influenced Joseph Smith. He does not appear to have tried to scale back plans from what he thought the Lord wanted because of a shortage of resources. He may have made some unwise choices, though, in trying to make the means sufficient for the visions he cherished.
A few thoughts:
-Was Joseph worrying about who would fund the printing of the Book of Mormon when he asked God again and again whether he could lend the 160 pages to Martin Harris? It's one matter to take "no" for an answer. It's quite another to wonder if you're going to alienate the only person with any significant financial means who believes in what you're doing. Did Joseph stay up late worrying about how his relatively wealthy friend Martin Harris would feel if he kept saying no? Did he pray a little too insistently before falling back asleep?
-The Saints sacrificed a great deal to contribute toward the building of the House of the Lord in Kirtland. Was Joseph trying too hard to generate money in other ways to fund church projects after the temple's dedication? Certainly, he appreciated sacrifices, but were there ever points when he wished he could stop asking people for money? Or when he figured they'd sacrificed enough and should be able to live in greater prospertity already?
-The Saints, under Joseph's direction, had refused to sell land after they were driven from Jackson County in 1833--they felt that to do so would be denying their faith in God's revelation of Jackson County as a sacred place. By 1838, they were settled outside Jackson County and facing pressure to move again. Joseph was still trying to pay debts left from his failed business ventures in Kirtland. Did he want too desperately to stay in a place where he hoped to establish prosperity and let some saints go too far in trying to protect it?
I don't know to what extent these are accurate and productive readings of each situation, but I do think that Joseph's complicated relationship with money deserves some attention in the way faithful Latter-day Saints think about him and the kinds of challenges he faced.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Myth of Joseph Smith
1. Ritz Crackers and Richard Bushman
Talked to Cort yesterday over a lunch of a few Ritz crackers about early LDS church history.
Cort and I exist in two interrelated, but distinct worlds--one in which we're busy chasing documents, trying to carve out a window to the past through what Joseph referred to in a letter as "the little narrow prison almost as it were totel darkness of paper pen and ink and a crooked bro=ken scattered and imperfect language," another in which we need that same past to operate as a repository for values and meaning, a life-enhancing myth.
I use myth in the most respectful sense of the word, to mean "a sacred story." Myths aren't necessarily untrue, the term is to differentiate between the what happened and the more significant what does it mean to us. You see, the events of a person's life alone, the traces left in artifacts and papers, aren't worth most people's time. The meaning comes through the myth that tells us what the person stands for.
Take the example of Jesus Christ. Events in his life include getting born, getting lost on a family trip, getting baptized, telling stories, writing on the sand, getting arrested, and getting killed in a particularly painful way. It's a confusing life, one not considered worth noting in any secular record from during or near his lifetime. Myths, though, taught the prepared how to understand him. There were myths of the Messiah, a God-filled individual who would transform and sanctify the world. There were myths of sacrifice and reconciliation that revealed meaning in his staggering suffering and terrifying death. And there were myths about Incarnation, and how through the example of a divine man we could come to know God. These and other myths, drawn from a variety of sources, were essential to accessing productive spiritual meaning from the events of Christ's life. I believe in Christ--and I owe that belief partly to guiding interpretative myths.
Yesterday, over Ritz crackers in the BYU library's hidden sixth floor, Cort and I talked about myths for finding meaning in the life of Joseph Smith.
Cort was particularly concerned because the myths of Joseph Smith he grew up with don't always fit as well as we might like with what we think we're learning from the written and material fragments Joseph Smith left behind. I don't think this is because our fundamental myth of Joseph Smith as a rasul, the Prophet of the Restoration, breaks down under pressure. I think the problem is with extra layers of myth we want to add for educational purposes. We want Joseph Smith not just to be a prophet, but an embodiment of all good values and pure wisdom, someone we can use anecdotally as an example of every principle, something like what Mason Weems tried to do with George Washington. Richard Bushman once reputedly described the LDS use of this approach as telling church history on credit cards--when morals are emphasized without any investment in correlation to fact, someday a reckoning will come due as those taught overdrawn myths struggle to reconcile them with our best guesses at historical reality.
We need to do more to promote myths of Joseph Smith, I told Cort, that do more to ease than to complicate our relationship with his history. That's too big a task for one day, but it's one I feel a need to start more openly working on. Encountering a new myth for a familiar figure, after all, can be exhilarating.
2. Walking on Water
I remember a Jeffrey R. Holland talk (looking it up I noticed it was halfway through my mission, which may explain why it's so vividly imprinted on my mind) called "The Grandeur of God." In that talk, Elder Holland reminded us of an important and "often uncelebrated" myth for understanding Christ, the myth of Christ's life as a revelation of the nature of the Father. It's a productive way, I think, to approach Christ and a productive way to approach God.
Perhaps a year before I heard that Elder Holland talk (if memory serves correctly, which it often doesn't), my companion and I were listening to his Truman G. Madsen tapes about the life of Joseph Smith. In one passage, I recall Madsen sharing what was probably his myth for approaching Joseph Smith, though I didn't recognize it as such at the time. Madsen said in that passage that the reason he studied Joseph Smith was to be inspired by Smith's Christlike attributes. In Smith, perhaps, Madsen hoped to see Jesus the way Elder Holland asked us to look to Jesus and to see in him God. Do we want Joseph to be a window to Jesus? To we want him to be an Incarnation of the whole gospel?
Now, I don't consider it blasphemous to look for God and Christ in any human being--I think part of exaltation is learning to see God in everyone around you, and was greatly inspired by Pres. Uchtdorf's first talk as an apostle, in which he proved himself to me to be a special witness of Christ (D&C 107: 23) by saying "I have seen the face of Christ in your faces, in your deeds, and in your exemplary lives." But I think we're going to be disappointed if we use the myth of Joseph Smith as a Christlike figure to access him the way we use Jesus as a Father-like figure when looking at his life, the same way we would be disappointed if we expected from Peter, the leader of the early Christian church, what we expect from Jesus Christ.
What are our myths of Peter? How do the scriptures make meaning out of him?
Peter is the one who walks on water, but gets frightened and sinks (Matt 14: 28-31), the one who tries to defend the Prince of Peace by cutting off a servant's ear (John 18: 10), the one who denies Christ and bitterly weeps (Matt 26: 75), the one who has and embraces a movement-changing vision (Acts 10: 9-28), but later gets rebuked by Paul for being afraid of revealing how far that vision has taken his faith from his people's customs (Gal 2: 11-14).
Our myth of Peter is a one of our greatest myths of discipleship and church leadership. It is about miraculous faith accompanied by devastating failures in faith, about startling visions and doctrines coupled with burdensome day-to-day business and persistent inequalities. We don't expect Peter to do everything right, or to embody every positive principle. Part of his myth is the ways that he falls short and fails. (Can we see Christ's grace in Peter's stumbling?)
What if we approached Joseph Smith the way we do Peter? What if, instead of expecting him to have all the answers, we were interested in the moments throughout his prophetic career that left him looking for guidance, as a gospel gradually emerged? What if it was OK for him to have prejudiced based on his place and time of origin, as Peter clearly did, and mostly importantly--what if we could replace some stories about how Joseph Smith lived the principles of the gospel with some stories about how he struggled with them? We don't want to speak evil of the Lord's anointed, certainly, but can we learn to speak of his failures productively and well? Can they play a greater role in our meaning-making myths of Joseph Smith?
I think that will start with the faithful learning to tell new Joseph Smith stories that fit the Peter sort of myth instead of the George Washington one.
3. Church History Thursdays
I don't think I'm the only one working on this, of course. Developing more reconcilable myths is a widespread endeavor, especially since the advent of the internet.
My personal contribution to this broad and scattered project will be to start a subset of posts on this blog dedicated to new ways of telling stories from the history of the Restored Church. We'll try to make these thoughts a regular Thursday event--some thoughts may be significantly shorter than others.
I hope you find them productive ethically and spiritually, as well as more historically resonant.
Talked to Cort yesterday over a lunch of a few Ritz crackers about early LDS church history.
Cort and I exist in two interrelated, but distinct worlds--one in which we're busy chasing documents, trying to carve out a window to the past through what Joseph referred to in a letter as "the little narrow prison almost as it were totel darkness of paper pen and ink and a crooked bro=ken scattered and imperfect language," another in which we need that same past to operate as a repository for values and meaning, a life-enhancing myth.
I use myth in the most respectful sense of the word, to mean "a sacred story." Myths aren't necessarily untrue, the term is to differentiate between the what happened and the more significant what does it mean to us. You see, the events of a person's life alone, the traces left in artifacts and papers, aren't worth most people's time. The meaning comes through the myth that tells us what the person stands for.
Take the example of Jesus Christ. Events in his life include getting born, getting lost on a family trip, getting baptized, telling stories, writing on the sand, getting arrested, and getting killed in a particularly painful way. It's a confusing life, one not considered worth noting in any secular record from during or near his lifetime. Myths, though, taught the prepared how to understand him. There were myths of the Messiah, a God-filled individual who would transform and sanctify the world. There were myths of sacrifice and reconciliation that revealed meaning in his staggering suffering and terrifying death. And there were myths about Incarnation, and how through the example of a divine man we could come to know God. These and other myths, drawn from a variety of sources, were essential to accessing productive spiritual meaning from the events of Christ's life. I believe in Christ--and I owe that belief partly to guiding interpretative myths.
Yesterday, over Ritz crackers in the BYU library's hidden sixth floor, Cort and I talked about myths for finding meaning in the life of Joseph Smith.
Cort was particularly concerned because the myths of Joseph Smith he grew up with don't always fit as well as we might like with what we think we're learning from the written and material fragments Joseph Smith left behind. I don't think this is because our fundamental myth of Joseph Smith as a rasul, the Prophet of the Restoration, breaks down under pressure. I think the problem is with extra layers of myth we want to add for educational purposes. We want Joseph Smith not just to be a prophet, but an embodiment of all good values and pure wisdom, someone we can use anecdotally as an example of every principle, something like what Mason Weems tried to do with George Washington. Richard Bushman once reputedly described the LDS use of this approach as telling church history on credit cards--when morals are emphasized without any investment in correlation to fact, someday a reckoning will come due as those taught overdrawn myths struggle to reconcile them with our best guesses at historical reality.
We need to do more to promote myths of Joseph Smith, I told Cort, that do more to ease than to complicate our relationship with his history. That's too big a task for one day, but it's one I feel a need to start more openly working on. Encountering a new myth for a familiar figure, after all, can be exhilarating.
2. Walking on Water
I remember a Jeffrey R. Holland talk (looking it up I noticed it was halfway through my mission, which may explain why it's so vividly imprinted on my mind) called "The Grandeur of God." In that talk, Elder Holland reminded us of an important and "often uncelebrated" myth for understanding Christ, the myth of Christ's life as a revelation of the nature of the Father. It's a productive way, I think, to approach Christ and a productive way to approach God.
Perhaps a year before I heard that Elder Holland talk (if memory serves correctly, which it often doesn't), my companion and I were listening to his Truman G. Madsen tapes about the life of Joseph Smith. In one passage, I recall Madsen sharing what was probably his myth for approaching Joseph Smith, though I didn't recognize it as such at the time. Madsen said in that passage that the reason he studied Joseph Smith was to be inspired by Smith's Christlike attributes. In Smith, perhaps, Madsen hoped to see Jesus the way Elder Holland asked us to look to Jesus and to see in him God. Do we want Joseph to be a window to Jesus? To we want him to be an Incarnation of the whole gospel?
Now, I don't consider it blasphemous to look for God and Christ in any human being--I think part of exaltation is learning to see God in everyone around you, and was greatly inspired by Pres. Uchtdorf's first talk as an apostle, in which he proved himself to me to be a special witness of Christ (D&C 107: 23) by saying "I have seen the face of Christ in your faces, in your deeds, and in your exemplary lives." But I think we're going to be disappointed if we use the myth of Joseph Smith as a Christlike figure to access him the way we use Jesus as a Father-like figure when looking at his life, the same way we would be disappointed if we expected from Peter, the leader of the early Christian church, what we expect from Jesus Christ.
What are our myths of Peter? How do the scriptures make meaning out of him?
Peter is the one who walks on water, but gets frightened and sinks (Matt 14: 28-31), the one who tries to defend the Prince of Peace by cutting off a servant's ear (John 18: 10), the one who denies Christ and bitterly weeps (Matt 26: 75), the one who has and embraces a movement-changing vision (Acts 10: 9-28), but later gets rebuked by Paul for being afraid of revealing how far that vision has taken his faith from his people's customs (Gal 2: 11-14).
Our myth of Peter is a one of our greatest myths of discipleship and church leadership. It is about miraculous faith accompanied by devastating failures in faith, about startling visions and doctrines coupled with burdensome day-to-day business and persistent inequalities. We don't expect Peter to do everything right, or to embody every positive principle. Part of his myth is the ways that he falls short and fails. (Can we see Christ's grace in Peter's stumbling?)
What if we approached Joseph Smith the way we do Peter? What if, instead of expecting him to have all the answers, we were interested in the moments throughout his prophetic career that left him looking for guidance, as a gospel gradually emerged? What if it was OK for him to have prejudiced based on his place and time of origin, as Peter clearly did, and mostly importantly--what if we could replace some stories about how Joseph Smith lived the principles of the gospel with some stories about how he struggled with them? We don't want to speak evil of the Lord's anointed, certainly, but can we learn to speak of his failures productively and well? Can they play a greater role in our meaning-making myths of Joseph Smith?
I think that will start with the faithful learning to tell new Joseph Smith stories that fit the Peter sort of myth instead of the George Washington one.
3. Church History Thursdays
I don't think I'm the only one working on this, of course. Developing more reconcilable myths is a widespread endeavor, especially since the advent of the internet.
My personal contribution to this broad and scattered project will be to start a subset of posts on this blog dedicated to new ways of telling stories from the history of the Restored Church. We'll try to make these thoughts a regular Thursday event--some thoughts may be significantly shorter than others.
I hope you find them productive ethically and spiritually, as well as more historically resonant.
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