Happy Atheist

There is an idea I that I hear often in church, in many forms. I heard it expressed very plainly today in Sunday School as we discussed the prophet Amos and what he called a “famine” in the land of hearing the Lord’s voice. As we talked about the Israelites having prophets and truth, and then falling away, a recurring theme came up which was this: You can’t have true happiness if you don’t have the Gospel.*

            There are variations on this, like that your marriage can’t be as happy if its not in the temple, that LDS families are happier than other families, and that if someone decides to leave the church, then they are necessarily oppositional and bitter toward the church and its members from then on.

            I raised my hand and mentioned my friend Greg the atheist who I have known since 1996 (I think) and with whom I spent a lot of time during my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college. We had many conversations about religion, atheism, morality, rationality, and the LDS church. Contrary to what I firmly believed would happen, Greg never came around to my way of thinking.

            And here’s the thing: Greg is happy. He lives in Silicon Valley now with his wife and a dog and he works as a computer programmer. In fact, as my friends go, he strikes me as one who is particularly content. The main reason that I think he is content is that he isn’t constantly using facebook and twitter to express how utterly fantastic his life is. There you have it. Greg doesn’t have the Gospel in his life, but he is happy.

            When I finished sharing this idea, there was a polite murmur of agreement. Then another person in the class raised her hand and said “sure, anyone can be happy, but when you have the gospel, you have joy”. Nice. In the words of my generation, I see what you did there. That’s just another trick to say Greg isn’t really happy, that if had the gospel in his life, he’d know what real happiness is, the poor soul.

            Can I make a suggestion? Consider for a moment that an atheist finding joy** in his life does not necessarily invalidate the teachings of the church in one fell swoop. I know, things would be simpler (and conveniently self-serving) if we could say that only Latter-day Saints know true joy. If atheists can be happy too, then the world is more confusing. But its also more interesting and mysterious. That’s worth the tradeoff if you ask me.

*The “Gospel” has at least two meanings in the LDS world. The more basic one is that it’s the message of the New Testament: that salvation comes through Jesus Christ through Faith, Repentance, Baptism, and The Gift of the Holy Ghost. The other meaning refers specifically to the Mormon understanding of the New Testament message and along with it, everything else that Mormons believe (the Word of Wisdom, the organization of the church, going to the temple, etc.) When I mention “the Gospel” in this entry, I mean this second more specific definition.

**Real joy in every sense of the word, and maybe even moments of spiritual ecstasy.

"When I was a boy, Cousin Jimmy Jamison got his privates shot off deer hunting," Salsifer said. "Nobody knew where the shot came from. There wasn't anybody around to help him and he bled to death."
"That's just as good," Frank said. "Who'd want to live without his privates?"
"Do you think he'll have them in the Celestial Kingdom?" Jeff asked.
"Sure he will," Raymond said. "How are you going to be gods and goddesses and create worlds without end and have spirit children forever and ever if you don't have your privates?"
"The righteous will have their equipment in the hereafter," Salsifer said. "But the sinful won't have any need for theirs. God will fix them just like you're fixing these here bull calves."
Frank had got a puny, shriveled up feeling in his pants. Nobody had ever told him about God castrating the wicked. It would be just like him to do it.

-Levi S. Peterson, The Backslider, p.94

Facing Facebook part 2

Guy in England replies:

Thing is, I just cannot reconcile what Mormons teach. Even if we go into the book of mormon itself, we come across text that has a certain air of superiority of whites. Okay, fair enough, if you (plural) don't teach that anymore, that's fine and dandy. However, just because half way through the 20th century onwards, your organisation has wanted to align itself more with mainstream protestantism doesn't make it right. I am not saying what I am saying to be an arse, because trust me, we have loads of American mormons trying to convert here in the UK, and through that I have went to several meetings with them when they were trying to convert me. I have read all the stuff, and in a way it scared me.It scared me because first off I am a Bible believing Christian; I'm apparently not in true relationship with Christ because I don't believe the claim of Joseph. I mean if we look at that 2 Nephi 5:21, the verse that makes mormons and Christians alike squirm, then we see that fundementally, what the 'golden plates' said were bloody awful. It reads, 'And the Lord had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.'Man this is bad. Maybe this is an example of the zeitgeist of the early 1800s, but Brooks, this is not 'cool'. This is with no shadow of a doubt elitist and down right racist. Not to mention the symbols you people use. I have seen it for myself. The dependence you guys have on Masonic practise and teachings is quite chilling. Look, I am not trying to be nasty or anything, it is just that I worry about this, frankly odd religion, which is nothing more than a corruption of Christianity.You also say that it is not your responsibility to apologise for Young. Mate, I think it is. If he is a supposed apostle/living saint of God, if he was at one point the prime human on the face of the earth, being in the capacity the mouth piece for God- you cannot, as a mormon be so willy-nilly about what he says. For what he says and does and has written by him is of great importance to the people who believe in this farce.

TR replies:

First of all, I don't take any offense to what you wrote. You raise some good points.

I'll respond to the things about Masonry, etc. later, but for now I'll just address what we were already talking about.

I'll admit that the passage in Nephi makes me cringe every time I read it, and I am not even black, so I imagine the it sounds even worse to you. The only way that makes sense in my own mind is that it was a totally isolated incident which in no way relates to race today. For one thing, this is the only way to make sense of later passages in the Book of Helaman wherein the Lamanites were righteous while the Nephites were wicked, but there was no change in skin color when that happened. The righteous ones were darker and the wicked ones were whiter.You said that the Mormon church changed its practices to be more aligned with mainstream protestantism. Maybe so, but that's not really the way I look at it. I think they stopped teaching it because they realized it was wrong, both doctrinally and morally.

The Church itself never made this whole thing established doctrine. Having a publishing company compile something Brigham Young probably said about interracial marriage into a book and publish it after he was dead is not the same as the Mormon Church, as an organization, officially declaring it as doctrine. I think of it as a personal belief of Brigham Young, and as such I do not feel responsible, or even entitled, to apologize for it.

Furthermore, I do not even understand what he was saying. Brigham Young was from the Eastern US where he no doubt met many blacks and whites who had had children with blacks. He must have known that they do not drop dead as soon as they "mix their seed". Although the language is unambiguous, it still doesn't make sense at all to me, and I still am not quite sure what Young was getting at. It is a very weird quote.I believe Brigham Young was a prophet, but also a human who learned throughout his life and taught many true things but probably let his own opinion slip out once in a while. Paul the Apostle did not instantly know every single thing about Christ as soon as he saw him. It took him time to learn, just like it takes all of us time to learn. And I think there is a reason why that particular discourse by Brigham Young has never been published by the Church, but by others.

I agree that I should not be "willy-nilly" about what he and other prophets have said. Everything I read by him I ponder to discover what it is I should learn from it. What I learned from that quote and others like it is that he is human, and while he is appointed as leader of the church by God, he still has the capacity for errors. That' why the LDS church emphasizes individual prayer and individual revelation.

All that said, I have met racist members of my church and they embarrass quite a bit. I think a lot of it is geographic as well. We are still kind of isolated here in Utah, and while Utah is becoming more diverse, it is still one of the whitest states in the USA.

I want to address your other points later on. If I read right, they were:

-Having a relationship with Jesus Christ without the teachings of Joseph Smith
-Mormons and Masons
-Mormonism as an "odd" religion.

Facing Facebook, part 1

An "apologist", of course, is someone who defends or reconciles, not someone who apologizes. Gordon B. Hinckley was one, and so am I in some of my finer moments. Here is a transcript of an online dialogue I had with some guy in England via Facebook.

Guy in England says:
I got this from researching into mormonism, I obtained a copy of the Journal of Discourses, written by the 2nd "prophet" of your "church"It basically talks of those of African descent, (btw, do you still teach the mark of Cain in relation to blacks?)Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 10 v 110:'Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain [the seed of Cain being blacks], the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so. The nations of the earth have transgressed every law that God has given, they have changed the ordinances and broken every covenant made with the fathers, and they are like a hungry man that dreameth that he eateth, and he awaketh and behold he is empty.'How do you justify this? This is not a cool teaching is it?It really scuppers what you replied to me, i.e., '[it] is wrong and in no way do i believe that God would do that.' So rather you are Mormon, and believe mormon teachings, or you dismiss the racist teachings of the 2nd president,"prophet" of Mormonism, and therefore nullify the teachings all together...

TR replies:
Thanks for bringing this topic up. It causes no end of misunderstanding.First of all I want to say thanks for going into actual Mormon literature to discover what Mormons believe rather than believing every rumour that gets passed around without checking into it. That said, I would advise giving much more weight to what the current church president is teaching now than what was written 150 years ago. It is probably true that Brigham Young taught that, however, Mormons give more credence to some texts than to others.The Bible, The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price are the only thing accepted as scripture. The Church does publish official statements as well, but those are usually things to do with policy and practice and not with doctrine. Brigham Young's Journal of Discourses is not a church publication. It is a collection by others of his sermons and writings.Brigham Young may well have believed and even taught some strange things about blacks, but the thing about Cain is definitely not an official church doctrine, even if there are some backwoods type Mormons who still believe it.Anyway, I don't think it is my responsibility to defend or apologize for what Brigham Young said 150 years ago. Isn't it enough that nobody teaches it now?In my own mind, I can do this without having to "nullify the teachings all together". I don't believe in a perfect, infallible, or always correct prophet, but rather one who is led by inspiration from God despite making mistakes.So to answer your question, no. This is not a cool teaching.

--end--

Part 2 to be posted on Wednesday, Sept. 24 2008