The Mormon Monk

A few weeks ago I received an email from someone I love who has been troubled by a doctrine central to the restored gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Joseph Smith received the first vision that called him as a prophet, he saw "two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other-- This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him! " (Joseph Smith History 1:17). Through this experience Joseph learned that God the "Father has a body of flesh and bone as tangible as man's; the Son also" (D&C 130:22). While most Christians I know imagine an anthropomorphic God (ie, one that looks like us), the God they imagine is incompatible with the deity described by the  Westminster Confession  and other important Christian creeds, "a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions." By insisting that God possesses a ph...

I'm thinking about Isaiah . Come join me!

Regular readers may know that I'm sympathetic to Hugh Nibley's description of money as "congealed wickedness," so I couldn't help but laugh--and think deeply--when a couple of stories recently caught my attention in which money became an important substitute for something like faith or love. Consider, for example, the recent example of an entire town in Cambodia which converted to Christianity in order to save money :  At upwards of US$500, the cost of slaughtering a buffalo to revive a relative condemned to ill-health by the spirits has pushed the Jarai indigenous minority residents of Somkul village in Ratanakkiri to a more affordable religious option: Christianity. In the village in O’Yadav district’s Som Thom commune, about 80 per cent of the community have given up on spirits and ghosts in favour of Sunday sermons and modern medicine.  Sev Chel , 38, said she made the switch because when she used to get sick, it could cost her hundreds of dollars to ap...

All entries in my recurring series, "Great Are the Words of Isaiah" will now be hosted at a content-specific site: greatarethewordsofisaiah.blogspot.com . Check out the inaugural post now--and I'll be migrating previous Isaiah essays from this blog soon.

When I served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I frequently distributed copies of the Book of Mormon to individuals who wanted to learn more about the Church. Many of those individuals eventually began to read the book from cover-to-cover, and when they did, they invariably had questions about the exact same passage in 1 Nephi 4:9-18. This is the point at which Nephi--seeking to recover the brass plates (which contain much of the Old Testament and his family's genealogy)--is confronted with the opportunity to kill Laban and take the plates by force. In a development that surprises almost every modern reader who is familiar with the Old Testament command "Thou shalt not kill," Nephi is "constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him" (1 Nephi 4:10). Nephi's dilemma--whether to obey the Decalogue ...

I was happy to hear from a reader last week (really, I'm just happy to know I have readers) who asked for my (unofficial) perspective on a few questions in preparation for an article he's writing on "The Mechanics of Belief." Here's my shot at answering his questions--and please, readers, jump in on the comments if you feel I misrepresent the perspective of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! 1. On a scale of 1-10, how important do you think allegory is, in our religious doctrines, for bolstering or maintaining strong adherence to a belief system?  For instance: Joseph Smith learning through a revelation from God that the Garden of Eden had been in Jackson County, Missouri, and it is where he will return;  that mormon souls begin as pre-human on a crystal orb in outer space; and that after humans die they have a chance to become Gods themselves and live on their own planet. For starters, let's be clear: Mormons believe in allegorical ...

Since I've been thinking about the relationship between divinity and creation recently, I thought I'd share a gem of my recent reading in old newspapers. I found this anonymously authored poem in the August 6, 1747 edition of Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette : The Deity A God there is, the whole Creation tells, Th' imprest Idea on our Reason dwells. In vain the Atheist, with his florid Lines, Dazzles the Crowd, and with th' Unthinking shines: His Proofs, like Bubbles on a rainy Day, That o'er the Waters trembling Surface play, On the least Touch their Emptiness explose, And shew'd on Air their slender Convex rose. Avaunt, ye Slaves, vile lumber of the Land, Offspring of Night, an inauspicious Band, Fly far from us, and there your Rites maintain, Where Darkness, Chance, and Elder Chaos reign: Reverse of Sense, and to Religion Foes, Let these for you a Trinity compose; With Hymns infernal let your Altars ring, And to these darling ...

The great trouble with atheism is that it is, by definition, a lack of belief. Individual atheists may believe a great number of things, but the one thing that binds them together as a group is a lack of belief in God. The problem in trying to unite such a group lies in the fact that human beings, on the whole, are much better at rallying around positive beliefs than they are in coalescing around the absence of belief. Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams have done a wonderful job of trying to fill that void, to provide those who do not believe in God with what you might call a scientific theology--a set of common beliefs for atheists to rally around. Their book, The View from the Center of the Universe , is truly fascinating and, more importantly for me, provides lots of food for the Mormon thought that swirls around in my brain. Abrams and Primack (AP) begin by noting both the virtues and the potential shortcomings of religion and science: "Traditional cultures' cosmologies wer...

As I was reading in Mosiah a few weeks ago, I did a double take at these verses: "And he commanded them that they should observe the sabbath day, and keep it holy, and also every day they should give thanks to the Lord their God. . . . And there was one day in every week that was set apart that they should gather themselves together to teach the peple, and to worship the Lord their God, and also, as often as it was in their power, to assemble themelves together" (Mosiah 18:23, 25). Do you see what's so odd about these two verses? First Alma commands them to keep the Sabbath day holy, and then he sets apart one day in the week on which the people of God are to gather together and worship. From our modern perspective, these two verses seem redundant because we honor the Sabbath by attending church, gathering together to worship. In fact, I initially tried to rationalize this apparent redundancy in three ways: 1) Perhaps, because of King Noah's wickedness, Alma and ...

Last summer I mentioned that accounts from Columbus's journeys to the New World consistently mention gold plates so thin that  they resemble the leaves of a book . Then, as I was listening to  Elder Quentin L. Cook's talk at General Conference in April , I couldn't help but remember another link between Columbus's journeys and the Book of Mormon. Elder Cook taught: "The Book of Mormon is of seminal importance. There will, of course, always be those who underestimate the significance of or even disparage this sacred book. Some have used humor. Before I served a mission, a university professor quoted Mark twain's statement that if you took 'And it came to pass' out of the Book of Mormon, it 'would have been only a pamphlet.' "A few months later, while I was serving a mission in London, England, a distinguished Oxford-educated teacher at London University, an Egyptian expert in Semitic languages [Ebeid Sarofim], read the Book of Mormon, c...

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ adhere to a code of health first outlined in an 1833 revelation to the prophet Joseph Smith. He taught the saints that "hot drinks are not for the body or belly" (Doctrine and Covenants 89:9). Subsequent revelations have clarified this injunction by identifying coffee and tea as the "hot drinks" referenced. Some well-meaning members have interpreted this focus on coffee and tea as a condemnation of caffeine because that is one compound which both drinks share, but coffee, not caffeine, is the banned substance--and with good reason. While caffeine may be harmful, studies have shown that coffee contains other substances which impair human health. According to a 1997 article published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition ,  "the polyphenols (tannins) in coffee bind to iron in the intestinal lumen, forming an insoluble complex and thereby inhibiting iron absorption" (168).  A second article, published ...

Yesterday I read "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams with my class:  so much depends  upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens One of my students observed that an excellent analog to the poem might be titled "The Green Toothbrush," an idea I liked so much that I couldn't help but compose the poem:       a pea-sized iridescent orb, like      a pearl so obviously pained    with polishing one indomitable grain   of sand that it quivers, sits       on the stiff unbending bristles     of my son’s green Peanuts toothbrush. Get it?  Like it?

Let's start with an exercise. Can you rank the following countries in order, from "highest percentage of the population attending church services" to lowest? (Answer at the bottom of the post) Brazil, China, France, India, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Sweden, US. The ordered list will, I suspect, surprise you and cause you to think deeply about your assumptions regarding the religiosity of various countries. This answer is just one of the fascinating nuggets I gleaned recently from a groundbreaking study of religion in the United States during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: American Grace , by Robert Putnam and David Campbell. One year ago--in April 2011--Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cited American Grace  as evidence that "Latter-day Saint women are unique in being overwhelmingly satisfied with their role in Church leadership. Furthermore, Latter-day Saints as a whole, men and women, have the strongest attachm...

I’ve been thinking, recently, about the importance of patience —and those of you who have been eagerly awaiting my next post must have been thinking about this topic too. (Sorry--job interviews and the arrival of a new child have kept me running.) We typically trot out Job as a model of patience because of the manner in which he patiently suffered the loss of his family, wealth, health, and friends. Indeed, the patience of Job has become proverbial; James writes that, that we should “Take . . . the prophets . . . for an example . . . of patience” and reminds us that we “have heard of the patience of Job” ( 5:10 -11). But Job’s patience is, perhaps, too exemplary—so perfect that it is difficult to relate to. After all, when Joseph Smith was learning patience at the hands of his enemies, he cried out to God for judgment and the Lord replied, “Thou art not yet as Job” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:10). Like Joseph Smith, you and I will never be “as Job.” But there are plenty of other...

In General Conference this past October (2011), Elder M. Russell Ballard spoke on  "The Importance of a Name,"  stressing the Lord's desire that we use His divinely appointed name for His church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (see D&C 115:4). Elder Ballard then explained that each "word [of that name] is clarifying and indispensable" and elucidated on the meaning of all nine words. Regarding the phrase, "of Latter-day," Elder Ballard declared that " Of Latter-day  explains that it is the same Church as the Church that Jesus Christ established during His mortal ministry but restored in these latter days. We know there was a falling away, or an apostasy, necessitating the Restoration of His true and complete Church in our time." As a man slightly obsessed with words and their meanings, I love Elder Ballard's approach to thinking about and using the Church's name. But this phrase, in particular, deserves a more t...

Most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will begin a year-long study of the Book of Mormon this year. As President Ezra Taft Benson famously noted, study of that book is associated with a number of inspiring promises: “Let us not remain under condemnation [see D&C 84:85], with its scourge and judgment, by treating lightly this great and marvelous gift the Lord has given to us. Rather, let us win the promises associated with treasuring it up in our hearts.” [1] “Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said . . . ‘a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts than by any other book.’” (BoM Introduction) “Parents who [read and talk about the Book of Mormon with their children] faithfully will be blessed to recognize early signals of spiritual growth in or challenges with their children and be better prepared to receive inspiration to strengthen and help those children.” [2] “Regular reading of and talking about the Book of M...