I
understand that some doubts have arisen in your mind. I don’t know for
sure what they are, but I imagine I have heard them before. Probably I
have entertained some of them in my own mind. And perhaps I still harbor
some of them myself. I am not going to respond to them in the ways that
you may have anticipated. Oh, I will say a few things about why many
doubts felt by the previously faithful and faith-filled are ill-founded
and misplaced: the result of poor teaching, naïve assumptions, cultural
pressures, and outright false doctrines. But my main purpose in writing
this letter is not to resolve the uncertainties and perplexities in your
mind. I want, rather, to endow them with the dignity and seriousness
they deserve. And even to celebrate them. That may sound perverse, but I
hope to show you it is not.
So,
first, a few words about doubts that are predicated on misbegotten
premises. I will illustrate an example of this from the life of
Mormonism’s greatest intellectual, and then address five other kinds in
particular. The example comes from B. H. Roberts.
From
his first experience debating a Campbellite minister on the Book of
Mormon in 1881, Roberts was devoted to defending the Mormon scripture.
While in England as a Church mission president in 1887 and 1888, he
studied in the Picton Library, collecting notes on American archeology
that could serve as external evidence in support of the Book of Mormon.
The three volumes of the work that resulted, New Witnesses for God, appeared
in 1895, 1909, and 1911. Then, on 22 August 1921, a young member wrote a
letter to Church Apostle James E. Talmage that would shake up the world
of Mormon apologetics, and dramatically refocus Roberts’s own
intellectual engagement with Mormonism . The brief letter sounded
routine enough. “Dear Dr. Talmage,” wrote W. E. Riter, one “Mr. Couch [a
friend of Riter's] of Washington, D.C., has been studying the Book of
Mormon and submits the enclosed questions concerning his studies. Would
you kindly answer them and send them to me.”1 Talmage
forwarded the five questions to the Church’s Book of Mormon expert, B.
H. Roberts, expecting a quick and routine reply. Four of the questions
dealt with anachronisms that were fairly easily dismissed by anyone who
understands a little about translation theory. But one had Roberts
stumped. It was this question: “How [are we] to explain the immense
diversity of Indian languages, if all are supposed to be relatively
recent descendants of Lamanite origin?” To put the problem in simple
terms, how, in the space of a mere thousand years or so, could the
Hebrew of Lehi’s tribe have fragmented and morphed into every one of the
hundreds of Indian languages of the Western Hemisphere, from Inuit to
Iroquois to Shoshone to Patagonian? Languages just don’t mutate and
multiply that quickly.
Several
weeks after Talmage’s request, Roberts still had not responded. In late
December, he wrote the President of the Church, explaining the delay
and asking for more time: “While knowing that some parts of my
[previous] treatment of Book of Mormon problems . . . had not been
altogether as convincing as I would like to have seen them, I still
believed that reasonable explanations could be made that would keep us
in advantageous possession of the field. As I proceeded with my recent
investigations, however, and more especially in the, to me, new field of
language problems, I found the difficulties more serious than I had
thought for; and the more I investigated the more difficult I found the
formulation of an answer to Mr. Couch’s inquiries to be.”2
Roberts
never found an answer to that question, and it troubled him the rest of
his life. Some scholars think he lost his testimony of the truthfulness
and antiquity of the Book of Mormon as a result of this and other
doubts—though I don’t see that in the record. But here is the lesson we
should learn from this story. Roberts’s whole dilemma was born of a
faulty assumption he imbibed wholesale, never questioning, never
critically analyzing it—that Lehi arrived on an empty continent, and
that his descendants alone eventually overran the hemisphere from the
Arctic Circle to the Straits of Magellan.
Nothing
in the Book of Mormon suggests that Lehi’s colony expanded to fill the
hemisphere. In fact, as John Sorenson has conclusively demonstrated, the
entire history of the Book of Mormon takes place within an area of
Nephite and Lamanite habitation some five hundred miles long and perhaps
two hundred miles wide (or a little smaller than Idaho). And though, as
late as 1981, the Book of Mormon introduction written by Bruce R.
McConkie referred to Lamanites as “the principal ancestors of the
American Indians,” absolutely nothing in that book of scripture gave
warrant for such an extravagant claim. That is why, as of 2007, the
Church changed the wording to “the Lamanites are among the
ancestors” (emphasis added). No, the most likely scenario that unfolded
in ancient America is that Lehi’s colony was one of dozens of
migrations, by sea and by land bridge. His descendants occupied a small
geographical area and intermingled [Page 134]and
intermarried with other peoples and cultures. Roberts couldn’t figure
out how Inuit and Patagonian languages derived from Hebrew because they
didn’t. And there was absolutely no reason to try to make that square
peg fit into that round hole. You see, even brilliant individuals and
ordained Seventies can buy into careless assumptions that lead them
astray. That Joseph Smith at some point entertained similar notions
about Book of Mormon geography only makes it more imperative for members
not to take every utterance of any leader as inspired doctrine. As
Joseph himself complained, “he did not enjoy the right vouchsafed to
every American citizen—that of free speech. He said that when he
ventured to give his private opinion,” about various subjects, they
ended up “being given out as the word of the Lord because they came from
him.”3
So
what are some of the assumptions we might be making that create
intellectual tension and spiritual turmoil? I will mention five: the
prophetic mantle, the nature of restoration, Mormon exclusivity, the
efficacy of institutional religion, and the satisfactions of the
gospel—including personal revelation. I can only say a few words about
each but enough, I hope, to provoke you to consider if these—or kindred
misplaced foundations—apply to you.
1. The Prophetic Mantle
Abraham
deceived Abimelech about his relationship with Sarah. Isaac deceived
Esau and stole both his birthright and his blessing (but maybe that’s
okay because he is a patriarch and not a prophet, strictly speaking).
Moses took glory unto himself at the waters of Meribah and lost his
ticket to the promised land as a result. He was also guilty of
manslaughter and covered up his crime. Jonah ignored the Lord’s call,
then later whined and complained because God didn’t burn Nineveh to the
ground as He had threatened.
It
doesn’t get a lot better in the New Testament. Paul rebuked Peter
sharply for what he called cowardice and hypocrisy in his refusal to
embrace the gentiles as equals. Then Paul got into a sharp argument with
fellow apostle Barnabas, and they parted company. So where on earth do
we get the notion that modern-day prophets are infallible specimens of
virtue and perfection? Joseph said emphatically, “I don’t want you to
think I am very righteous, for I am not very righteous.”4 To remove any possibility of doubts, he canonized those scriptures in which he is rebuked for his inconstancy and weakness.
Most
telling of all is section 124:1, in which this pervasive pattern is
acknowledged and explained: “for unto this end have I raised you up,
that I might show forth my wisdom through the weak things of the earth” (D&C 124:1;
emphasis added). Air-brushing our prophets, past or present, is a
wrenching of the scriptural record and a form of idolatry. God
specifically said he called weak vessels so that we wouldn’t place our
faith in their strength or power, but in God’s.
Most
crippling, however, are the false expectations this paradigm sets up:
When Pres. Woodruff said the Lord would never suffer his servants to
lead the people astray, we can only reasonably interpret that statement
to mean that the prophets will not teach us any soul-destroying
doctrine—not that they will never err. President Kimball himself
condemned Brigham Young’s Adam-God teachings as heresy; and as an
apostle he referred as early as 1963 to the priesthood ban as a
“possible error” for which he asked forgiveness.5 The
mantle represents priesthood keys, not a level of holiness or
infallibility. God would not have enjoined us to hear what prophets,
seers, and revelators have to say “in all patience and faith” if their
words were always sage and inspired (D&C 21:5).
2. The Nature of Restoration
Recently
a Mormon scholar announced his departure from Mormonism and baptism
into another faith tradition. “Mormons believe that the [Christian]
church—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant versions alike—completely
died,” he said of his principal reason for leaving. Then he quoted
another dissident as saying, “The idea that God was sort of snoozing
until 1820 now seems to me absurd.”
Well,
guess what? That sounds absurd to Mormons as well. President of the
Church John Taylor said, “There were men in those dark ages who could
commune with God, and who, by the power of faith, could draw aside the
curtain of eternity and gaze upon the invisible world . . . There were
men who could gaze upon the face of God, have the ministering of angels,
and unfold the future destinies of the world. If those were dark ages I
pray God to give me a little darkness.”6
Joseph
didn’t believe the Christian Church died either. He was very particular
about his wording when he recast his first revelation about restoration
to state specifically that God was bringing the Church back out of the
wilderness, where it had been nurtured of the Lord during a period when
priesthood ordinances were no longer performed to bind on earth and in
heaven. Precious morsels of truth had lain scattered throughout time,
place, religion, and culture, and Joseph saw his mission as that of
bringing it all into one coherent whole, not reintroducing the gospel ex
nihilo.
3. Mormon Exclusivity
In
a related way, some come to doubt Mormonism’s “monopoly on salvation,”
as they call it. It grows increasingly difficult to imagine that a body
of a few million, in a world of seven billion, can really be God’s only
chosen people and the sole heirs of salvation. I think this represents
the most tragically unfortunate misperception about Mormonism. The
ironic truth is that the most generous, liberal, and universalist
conception of salvation in all Christendom is Joseph Smith’s view. We
would do well to note what the Lord said to Joseph in Doctrine and
Covenants section 49, when he referred to “holy men” that Joseph knew
nothing about and whom the Lord had reserved unto himself. Clearly,
Mormons don’t have a monopoly on righteousness, truth, or God’s
approbation. Here and hereafter, a multitude of non-Mormons will
participate in the Church of the Firstborn.
As
a mighty God, our Heavenly Father has the capacity to save us all. As a
fond father, He has the desire to do so. That is why, as Joseph taught,
“God hath made a provision that every spirit
can be ferreted out in that world” that has not deliberately and
definitively chosen to resist a grace that is stronger than the cords of
death.7 The
idea is certainly a generous one, and it seems suited to the weeping
God of Enoch, the God who has set His heart upon us. If some
inconceivable few will persist in rejecting the course of eternal
progress, they are “the only ones” (D&C 76:37, 38) who will be damned, taught Joseph Smith.“All the rest” (D&C 76:39) of us will be rescued from the hell of our private torments and subsequent alienation from God.
4. Inefficacy of Institutional Religion
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer wrote perhaps his greatest sermon on the fallacy of cheap
grace. I think the plague of our day is the fallacy of cheap
spirituality. I find among the college freshmen I teach a near-universal
disdain for “organized religion” and at the same time an energetic
affirmation of personal spirituality.
Holiness
is found in how we treat others, not in how we contemplate the cosmos.
As our experiences in marriages, families, and friendship teach us, it
takes relationships to provide the friction that wears down our rough
edges and sanctifies us. Then, and only then, those relationships become
the environment in which those perfected virtues are best enjoyed. We
need those virtues not just here, but eternally, because “the same
sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it
will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy” (D&C 130:2).
In
this light, the project of perfection, or purification and
sanctification, is not a scheme for personal advancement, but a process
of better filling—and rejoicing in—our role in what Paul called the body
of Christ, and what others have referred to as the New Jerusalem, the
General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, or, as in the prophecy of
Enoch, Zion. There are no Zion individuals. There is only a Zion
community.
5. Satisfactions of the Gospel/Personal Revelation
Brigham
Young said, “To profess to be a Saint, and not enjoy the spirit of it,
tries every fiber of the heart, and is one of the most painful
experiences that man can suffer.”10 We
expect the gospel to make us happy. We are taught that God answers
prayers, that all blessings can be anticipated as a direct and
predictable result of a corresponding commandment. I love that quote,
because I think Young was being truly empathetic. He realized that then,
as now, thousands of Saints were paying the high price of discipleship
and asking, “Where is the joy?” And he knew the question was born in
agony and bewilderment.
I
have no glib solace to offer. I will not bore you or insult your
spiritual maturity with injunctions to pray harder, to fast more, to
read your scriptures. I know you have been traveling that route across a
parched desert. But do let me repeat here three simple ideas: be
patient, remember, and take solace in the fellowship of the desolate. In
Lehi’s vision, he recorded, he “traveled for the space of many hours in
darkness” (1 Nephi 8:8).
Patience
does not mean to wait apathetically and dejectedly, but to anticipate
actively on the basis of what we know; and what we know, we must
remember. I believe remembering can be the highest form of devotion. To
remember is to rescue the sacred from the vacuum of oblivion. To
remember Christ’s sacrifice every Sunday at the sacrament table is to
say no to the ravages of time, to refuse to allow his supernal sacrifice
to be just another datum in the catalogue of what is past. To remember
past blessings is to give continuing recognition of the gift and to
reconfirm the relationship to the Giver as one that persists in the here
and now. Few—very few—are entirely bereft of at least one solace-giving
memory: a childhood prayer answered, a testimony borne long ago, a
fleeting moment of perfect peace. And for those few who despairingly
insist they have never heard so much as a whisper, then know this: We
don’t need to look for a burning bush when all we need is to be still
and remember that we have known the goodness of love, the rightness of
virtue, the nobility of kindness and faithfulness. And as we remember,
we can ask if we perceive in such beauties merely the random effects of
Darwinian products, or the handwriting of God on our hearts.
At
the same time, remembering rather than experiencing moves us toward
greater independence and insulates us from the vicissitudes of the
moment. Brigham said God’s intention was to make us as independent in
our sphere as he is in his.11That
is why the heavens close from time to time, to give us room for
self-direction. That is why the Saints rejoiced in a Pentecostal day in
Kirtland’s temple but were met with silence in Nauvoo—silence, and their
memories of Kirtland. One can see the Lord gently tutoring us to
replace immediacy with memory when he says to Oliver, “If you desire a
further witness, cast your mind upon the night that you cried unto me in
your heart, that you might know concerning the truth of these things.
Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater
witness can you have than from God?” (D&C 6:22–23).
Citing
C. S. Lewis, Rachael Givens writes, “God allows spiritual peaks to
subside into (often extensive) troughs in order [to have] ‘servants who
can finally become Sons,’ ‘stand[ing] up on [their] own legs—to carry
out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish . . . growing
into the sort of creature He wants [them] to be.’ ”12
Finally,
find solace in what I have called the fellowship of the desolate—with
Mother Teresa, who said, “I am told God loves me—and yet the reality of
darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my
soul.. . . Heaven from every side is closed.”13
Or with the magnificent Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who poured out his soul in this achingly beautiful lament:
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.14
Or
with my favorite poet, George Herbert, who expressed frustration with
his own ministry, barren as it felt of joyful fruit, and described
his—almost—defection from life lived in silent patience:
I struck the board, and cried, No more.
I will abroad.
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it: there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?
All wasted?
…
Away; take heed:
I will abroad.
Call in thy death’s-head there: tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his [own] need,
Deserves his load.
But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child:
And I replied, My Lord.Spelling has been modernized.">15
Finally,
listen to Fyodor Dostoevsky who, like Herbert, found only the slim
anchor of one memory ensconced in an overwhelming silence to hold
onto—but hold on he did:
I
will tell you that I am a child of this century, a child of disbelief
and doubt. I am that today and will remain so until the grave. How much
terrible torture this thirst for faith has cost me and costs me even
now, which is all the stronger in my soul the more arguments I can find
against it. And yet, God sends me sometimes instants when I am
completely calm; at those instants I love and feel loved by others, and
it is at those instances that I have shaped for myself a Credo where
everything is clear and sacred for me. This Credo is very simple, here
it is: to believe that nothing is more beautiful, profound, sympathetic,
reasonable, manly and more powerful than Christ.16
Conclusion
Maybe
none of these issues apply to you. Maybe you have a whole different set
of doubts. Or maybe none of my words are persuasive in allaying those
doubts. In that case, I turn to my last but most important point. Be
grateful for your doubts.
William
Wordsworth was. Mormons know the early stanzas from his “Intimations”
ode, the “trailing clouds of glory” lines. But more magnificent, in my
opinion, are the later stanzas, where he tells us what he is most
grateful for, where he finds the source of his joy. After struggling
with the indelible sadness of adulthood, trying in vain to recapture the
innocence and joy of childhood delight and spontaneity, he realizes it
is the tension, the irresolution, the ambiguity and perplexity of his
predicament that is the spur to his growth. That is why, as he tells us,
in the final analysis he appreciates the very things that plague the
questing mind. He is grateful not for the blithe certainties and freedom of a past childhood. He is thankful not for what we would expect him to appreciate:
Not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: —
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised.…
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day.17
You
see, it was in the midst of his perplexity, of his obstinate questions,
uncertainties, misgivings, and shadowy recollections that almost but
don’t quite pierce the veil, that he found the prompt, the agitation,
the catalyst that spurred him from complacency to insight, from generic
pleasures to revelatory illumination, from being a thing acted upon to
being an actor in the quest for his spiritual identity.
I
know I am grateful for a propensity to doubt because it gives me the
capacity to freely believe. I hope you can find your way to feel the
same. The call to faith is a summons to engage the heart, to attune it
to resonate in sympathy with principles and values and ideals that we
devoutly hope are true and which we have reasonable but not certain grounds for believing to be true. There
must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the
choice more truly a choice, and therefore more deliberate and laden with
more personal vulnerability and investment. An overwhelming
preponderance of evidence on either side would make our choice as
meaningless as would a loaded gun pointed at our heads. The option to
believe must appear on one’s personal horizon like the fruit of
paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic
tension. Fortunately, in this world, one is always provided with
sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible
conviction or dismissive denial. We are acted upon, in other words, by
appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites,
and our egos. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the
purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the
choice to believe, is, in the final analysis, an action that is
positively laden with moral significance.
The
call to faith, in this light, is not some test of a coy god waiting to
see if we “get it right.” It is the only summons, issued under the only
conditions which can allow us to reveal fully who we are, what we most
love, and what we most devoutly desire. Without constraint, without any
form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible
projection of what resides in our hearts. Like the poet’s image of a
church bell that reveals its latent music only when struck, or a
dragonfly that flames forth its beauty only in flight, so does the
content of a human heart lie buried until action calls it forth. The
greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is and knowing that a thing is not.
This
is the realm where faith operates; and when faith is a freely chosen
gesture, it expresses something essential about the self.
Modern
revelation, speaking of spiritual gifts, notes that while to some it is
given to know the core truth of Christ and His mission, to others is
given the means to persevere in the absence of certainty. The New
Testament makes the point that those mortals who operate in the grey
area between conviction and incredulity are in a position to choose most
meaningfully, and with most meaningful consequences.
Peter’s
tentative steps across the water capture the rhythm familiar to most
seekers. He walks in faith, he stumbles, he sinks, but he is embraced by
the Christ before the waves swallow him. Many of us will live out our
lives in doubt, like the unnamed father in the Gospel of Mark. Coming to
Jesus, distraught over the pain of his afflicted son, he said simply,
“I believe, help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Though he walked through mists of doubt, caught between belief and
unbelief, he made a choice, and the consequence was the healing of his
child.
“The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it,” wrote Kierkegaard.18 Miracles
do not depend on flawless faith. They come to those who question as
well as to those who know. There is profit to be found, and advantage to
be gained, even—perhaps especially—in the absence of certainty.
From
a fireside presentation to the Single Adult Stake, Palo Alto, CA,
October 14, 2012. Revised October 22, 2012/November 14, 2012.
1.W. E. Riter to James E. Talmage, 22 August 1921, in B. H. Roberts, Studies of the Book of Mormon, ed. Brigham D. Madsen (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1992), 35. [↩]
2.B. H. Roberts to Heber J. Grant et al., 29 December 1921, in Roberts, Studies of the Book of Mormon, 46. [↩]
3.Hyrum L. Andrus and Helen Mae Andrus, They Knew the Prophet: Personal Accounts from over 100 People Who Knew Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1974), 140. [↩]
4.Manuscript History of the Church D-1, pp. 1555–57. [↩]
5.Spencer W. Kimball, Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball, (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1995), 448–49. [↩]
6.John Taylor, in Brigham Young et al., Journal of Discourses,
26 vols., reported by G. D. Watt et al. (Liverpool: F. D. and S. W.
Richards, et al., 1851–86; repr., Salt Lake City: n.p., 1974),
16:197–98. [↩]
7.Joseph Smith, Words of Joseph Smith, ed. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook (Orem, UT: Grandin, 1991), 360. [↩]
9.Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 95. [↩]
10.Journal of Discourses, 12:168. [↩]
11.Journal of Discourses, 3:252, 13:33. [↩]
13.Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light (New York: Random House Digital, 2009), 202. [↩]
14.Gerard Manley Hopkins, Selected Poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins, ed. Bob(Mineola, NY: Dover, 2011), 59–60. [↩]
15.George Herbert, The Temple, 2nd ed. (1633; repr., London: Pickering, 1838), 159, Spelling has been modernized. [↩]
16.Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 160. [↩]
17.William Wordsworth, Poems of Wordsworth, ed. Matthew Arnold (London: MacMillan, 1882), 205–6. Emphasis added. [↩]
18.Søren Kierkegaard, The Soul of Kierkegaard: Selections from His Journals, ed. Alexander Dru (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 213. [↩]
