Things not included in the Come Follow Me program.

As we wind down the Old Testament in Come Follow Me here are some of the things you missed because we don't include the Apocrypha.

Tobit: Do you have a hankering for historical fiction set in the time between the Old and New Testaments with a supernatural aspect and a side of moral preaching? Look no further than Tobit.

Judith: Still interested in historical fiction, but with a female protagonist who chops off a guy's head, and a plot and characters symbolizing Judah and its enemies? Judith is your book.

Esther: Are you disappointed because Esther is just too short? Did you know that there is more? Here's six more chapters worth of material.

Wisdom: Are you the kind of person that can't get enough of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and you want another book full of pithy little sayings that teach wisdom? The Book of Wisdom is there for you.

Sirach: STILL not enough pithy little sayings? Sirach is the Stephen Covey of the Old Testament. Not doctrine, but written by a famous believer.

Baruch: Ever felt that you just wanted a little more Jeremiah? Well, it's not exactly Jeremiah, but Baruch really, really likes Jeremiah.

Letter of Jeremiah: Ever felt that you just wanted a little more Jeremiah? Well, this one actually is a little more Jeremiah.

Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children: Have you ever read Daniel chapter 3 and thought, "What if this chapter was 68 verses longer?" Read it to find out.

Susanna: Did you ever get to the end of the Book of Daniel and think, "This could have used more nudity and talk of sex." Susanna is the missing chapter from Daniel that you have been looking for.

Bel and the Dragon: Did you ever feel like your life was missing a good mystery story involving Daniel? Did you ever think that the story of Daniel in the lion's den was really missing something? These two stories, "Bel" and "The Dragon", have got you covered.

1 and 2 Esdras: Did you read Ezra and think, "Man, I really wanted to read more lists of all the names of the people who came to Jerusalem from Babylon, and the names of their ancestors, and what jobs their ancestors had, and the names of the cities and towns they came from, and the names of the villages and towns they settled in around Jerusalem, and EXACTLY how much gold and silver they brought with them." Well Esdras has all that and more! Gird your loins for discussions about wine, women, and the king! (It's the truth!) Also ancient international politics.

Prayer of Manasseh: You probably were always wondering about that one prayer mentioned briefly in a single verse in Chronicles where a king named Manasseh prayed after getting captured. No? Oh I thought everyone obsessed over things like that. Well here is that prayer! (Maybe)

1 Maccabees: Have you been looking for an unbiased, emotionless, 100% historically accurate history of the beginning of the Hasmonean Dynasty? Well you won't find any of that here! This is 100% pure, adulterated propaganda baby! Reading this you will find that Judas Maccabeus was a noble, holy, enlightened, faithful priest of the highest order who valiantly fought against the Godless heathens who did terrible things like... take a bath (gasp!), got a haircut (clutches pearls), and didn't believe in killing heretics! (faints) You will find a complete history of how Judas, his brothers, and nephews, violently defeated the nasty imperial army by valiantly running away. Many times. They were so successful at defeating the imperial armies that they only had to definitively defeat them 7 or 8 times and drive them from the land forever. Until they came back. Again. Hey once they even won a battle! You will learn how Judas nobly "stuck it to the man" by robbing poor defenseless villages, I mean put down hot beds of insurrection. And how Judas reminded all Jews to be faithful to God by personally killing Jews traveling to Jerusalem who didn't show him proper respect by voluntarily "donating" all their worldly possessions to their noble cause. Additionally you will learn how it is evil and an afront to God to buy the position of "high priest" (unless you are personally related to Judas Maccabeus, then it is a smart move and shows how intelligent you are). There will be many other important tidbits such as, let's play the game guess who is secretly Jewish! The Romans! Who knew? They are the lost ten tribes or something. We invited them to come visit Jerusalem and see what a great place it is. I'm sure they'll be great friends and allies in the future. (Ominous foreshadowing)

2 Maccabees: On a serious note, this is perhaps the most "modern" of all the books in the Bible. It comes with an introduction by the author. He identifies himself, states his experience and credentials, and explains his sources. He identifies potential biases, and discusses the difficulty of writing accurate history and the reliability of sources. Everyone should read the first chapter of 2 Maccabees because it explains many of the things about how scripture is written, but is never actually explicitly talked about anywhere else.

Addendum: A note about 1 and 2 Maccabees. They are written to support the Hasmonean Dynasty. They controlled Jerusalem shortly before the Romans took control (and the Hasmoneans were the ones who allied themselves with the Romans, and we know how that turned out). Herod the Great (the one that killed all the babies in Bethlehem, that Herod) married the last princess of the Hasmonean Dynasty. If there was any single group of people responsible for the state of society at the time of Jesus, the Hasmoneans are the number one culprits. They are responsible for the formation of both the Sadducees and Pharisees (there was a civil war between different parts of the royal family, and those who became the Sadducees supported one side, those who would become Pharisees supported the other side). They laid the groundwork for the conditions that would result in the assassination of Jesus.

2 Maccabees is still heavily pro-Hasmonean, the author was being paid by them to write their history after all, but it presents a more historical picture than 1 Maccabees. 1 Maccabees is pure propaganda. If you read through 1 Maccabees and think "Hey I like these guys. They are valiant defenders of the faith and scripture." You really, really need to rethink your approach to religion. The way of thinking on display in 1 Maccabees is the same way of thinking that Jesus later condemned as hypocrisy, and the same thinking was used to justify killing him. Basically if you take everything taught in 1 Maccabees and do the exact opposite then you should be good.

Joseph F. Smith had a classical understanding of time, and that is important

In 1918 Joseph F. Smith had a revelation on the Savior's visit to the spirit world and the redemption of the dead. Leading up to this revelation he had many questions weighing on his mind brought on by recent family deaths and his own reckoning with mortality.

While explaining his thinking leading up to the revelation Joseph F. Smith said,

25 I marveled, for I understood that the Savior spent about three years in his ministry among the Jews.... 27 But his ministry among those who were dead was limited to the brief time intervening between the crucifixion and his resurrection; 28 And I wondered at the words of Peter—wherein he said that the Son of God preached unto the spirits in prison... and how it was possible for him to preach to those spirits and perform the necessary labor among them in so short a time. (D&C 138:25-28)

Part of what made Joseph F. Smith ask his questions in the first place was the fact that he could not see anyway for the Savior to have sufficient time to preach to so many people who had already died. Without realizing it Joseph F. Smith had certain implicit metaphysical assumptions that determined what kinds of questions he would ask and what kinds of answers he would look for. Joseph F. Smith operated with a certain subconscious understanding of time that created a paradox that necessitated an answer.

If Joseph F. Smith had lived much later in our day and had asked the same question, "How could the Savior do more in three days than he had done in three years on Earth?" he would have different options available to answer this question regarding time. But for him, this question presented an unresolvable paradox. If members of the Church did not have the benefit of Joseph F. Smith's revelation and asked the same question today, a number of people would probably invoke the principles of relativity and relative time.

Possible answers could have included things like, "The flow of time is different in the spirit world.", or "Time is only something relevant to mortality, so the Savior was not bound by time constraints in the spirit world." Any of these answers would have lessened the urgency of resolving the three day time constraint on the Savior, and could have possibly lead Joseph F. Smith to consider his questions differently, or even a different set of questions.

Because of the proliferation of Einstein's theories of relativity we have a very different fundamental understanding of time than people previously had. Generally we do not even realize the immense difference in how we collectively understand time compared to even 100 years ago. The idea that time can flow at different rates, or that time is relative to the observer, has so permeated our society that major Hollywood movies can use the idea as a crucial plot point and we do not even consider how strange a concept it is for time to flow differently or fail to grasp the relative nature of time. Even the concept of time travel is a relatively modern concept that we do not realize entirely depends on certain crucial ontological concepts of time that have only entered our collective consciousness in the past 100 years.

For Joseph F. Smith his subconscious concept of time worked very differently from ours. He was not acculturated to a relative or even a dimensional understanding of time. For him time was the same for everyone, everywhere including the spirit world, and, even though it was subconscious and unintentional, how he understood time was central to the paradox that he faced. If he had a different subconscious concept of time then his approach to the question of how did the Savior accomplish in three days what he did not manage to do in three years would have turned out differently. Perhaps he would not have pondered the question in the same way, or he would have gone looking in different directions for different answers to resolve the issues that weighed on his mind.

My point is, when Joseph F. Smith was faced with certain questions, the ones that were the most paradoxical for him and presented the greatest challenge, were the ones that were only present because of how he subconsciously viewed time. The implicit cultural assumptions he unintentionally held placed boundaries on the kinds of questions he would ask, and the kinds of answers he sought. His ontology (his fundamental understanding of the nature of existence) informed the structure of the questions and paradoxes he faced.

In this case the unstated, and unintentional, prepositions of Joseph F. Smith lead him to a question that could be answered by revelation. In fact, his assumptions about the nature of time made his questioning possible. If he had a different understanding of time then he may not have been forced to reckon with his uncertainty in the same way. So his subconscious assumptions on the nature of time were beneficial and greatly simplified the issue he was considering. But it does not always turn out that way.

Quite often we are faced with paradoxes or questions we cannot find an answer for. Frequently the paradox only exists because of the subconscious, unintentional choices we have made in understanding the world. Many times I see people of faith asking some form of the question, "How does XYZ work if ABC?" or, "How can XYZ be true when ABC is true?" For them these are paradoxical questions for which there is no solution. But quite often the paradox only exists because of unstated assumptions they have made without even realizing it. Many such questions, such as the relationship between science and religion, are entirely dependent on subconscious assumptions we have made regarding the nature of science, scripture, authority, and revelation (not to mention epistemology, language, metaphysics, and God himself).

Sometimes the answer to someone's question simply requires the right information with an acceptable explanation. But other times the paradox lies entirely in unstated assumptions the person has made. These are the most difficult to address, because recognizing our own unstated assumptions about reality, and identifying them as the source of our confusion, is perhaps one of the most difficult human tasks in existence. It is easier to change someone's behavior than it is to make them realize that the intractable paradoxes that seemingly have no resolution are the result of unintentional assumptions they have made about the nature of reality itself. And the most difficult of these already difficult conflicts are the ones that are most closely bound to someone's identity.

In summary, I have used the example of Joseph F. Smith and the questions he faced about the spirit world to point out certain assumptions he had about the nature of time that may be very different from our assumptions today. Using this, I introduced the idea that the assumptions we unintentionally and subconsciously make can, in part, determine the types of questions we ask, and what we might consider to be an intractable paradox. Some questions can be answered through discovering new information, but other more paradoxical questions can only be resolved by considering what underlying assumptions we have unintentionally made about reality. Addressing these more paradoxical questions is a difficult endeavor that takes patience, experience, and practice. But by first recognizing that these unstated assumptions exist we can be more aware of assumptions that make some questions seemingly unanswerable, and ultimately give us a path towards resolving these paradoxes. Sometimes finding the answer to a question requires realizing that we are asking the wrong question.

Temple Doctrine Part 1: Order and Chaos

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the spirit of God swept over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2, NRSV)

The very first act of God as recorded in Genesis was to create order from chaos. The primordial chaos was formless and void. It had no shape nor could any part of it be differentiated from another. There were no opposites, no light nor dark, neither hot nor cold. This primordial chaos was typified by water which anciently was the one thing that had no set form. But in the midst of the chaotic primordial waters God created a space where order, and therefore life, could exist. God took the indistinguishable primordial chaos and differentiated it creating light and dark, day and night, springtime and harvest. The opposite of life was the formless void.

In our current popular culture order is equated with rigidity and invariance. Order is viewed as something that limits free will and is oppressive. But that kind of order is only the order that people impose on the world. The order provided by God in Genesis is the natural order that is the basis of life. Without the natural order, life would know nothing but chaos and corruption. Here is one of the major themes of Genesis. The natural order is created out of chaos, and from that order life is created.

The creation story in Genesis is crafted to show progressive spheres of order. On the outside of creation is where we find the primordial chaos without order. But beneath the dome of the sky there is a space created where life can exist because of the order created by God. Inside of this sphere is where we find world as we know it. And at the center of creation God created a garden as a perfect symbol of an orderly life. It was not wild untended garden, but well kept and full of all useful plants. The garden sustained life and at the center of the garden was the tree of life that gave immortality and eternal life. 

But at some point corruption and it's resulting disorder and chaos enters the garden in the form of a serpent. But why a serpent? Here is where our modern culture fails to understand the symbolism here. Suppose I am telling a story and it is about a young girl who wears a red cape with a hood and she is walking through a forest. Just based on that, who does she meet in the forest? Does she meet a goat? Or a troll? Or a fairy? No, she meets a wolf. Why does she meet a wolf and not a bear, or perhaps a family of bears with papa bear, mama bear, and baby bear?

We know that she will meet a wolf because in our culture we have that story ingrained in our collective understanding. We can do this with many other stories. A story of three little pigs, what do they do and what happens to them? A story starts out with a tortoise and a rabbit, what will happen? A girl with long hair lives in a tower, what will happen? We know the answers to these questions because we have been taught them by our culture.

So in the story of the creation where God brings order to chaos, who will come to corrupt the order created by God? Here our culture fails us because we are not surrounded by the milieu of the ancient world. If we weren't steeped in our culture it would seem strange that three little pigs were building houses and why they used three different building materials. In the same way it seems strange to us that a serpent comes into the well ordered garden to corrupt it. But in the ancient world it was something generally understood and to be expected.

In the mythology of the Middle East the serpent was the symbol of the primordial chaotic waters. In Canaanite and Hebrew stories a serpent is the agent of chaos and evil. The Babylonian goddess Tiamat was the goddess of the sea and from her the world was created, and she is frequently described and depicted as a dragon or a serpent. The symbol of a serpent, especially a sea serpent, as an agent of chaos and evil can be found throughout Indo-European mythologies. From Norse mythology to Persian mythology, and almost everywhere in between, a serpent or a dragon represents evil, destruction, and death and in many cases is associated with water, the sea, or destructive storms. So the symbol of a serpent entering into the garden to tempt our first parents to bring death and corruption would have been readily understood by people anciently.

The effect of the serpent in the Garden of Eden was to bring corruption which would ultimately result in death. In this way the cosmic principle of order and life are contrasted with corruption and death. Without God the cosmos is chaotic and devoid of order and life. God brings order to the chaotic darkness and from that life can exist. But the world is not completely ordered. Corruption and death are fundamental parts of the world. We ourselves are corrupt and because of that we are cut off from the the orderly garden of life and the presence of God. We will die because of the inherent corruption found in the world.

In the temple endowment we symbolically go through the process of seeing order and life created in the world. We are introduced into the garden. We are expelled from the garden out into the corrupt world where we will experience sorrow and death. To return to the presence of God and gain eternal life we must have the order of God restored to us. This is something we cannot do by ourselves. Through ministering angels God reveals to us the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God, which order is necessary for us to return to the presence of God. Just as God created life in the world by bringing order to the chaos, it is only through the Order of the Son of God that we can remove corruption and chaos from our lives and gain eternal life.

We Already are in Hell

In this past conference Elder Dale Renlund spoke on a topic that is very familiar to anyone who has spent time studying theology, the problem of evil. He told of a conversation he had with a man while visiting Rwanda. The man asked the classic question,

“If there were a God, wouldn’t He have done something about [the genocide]?”

Elder Renlund explain the issue in this way, "For this man—and for many of us—suffering and brutal unfairness can seem incompatible with the reality of a kind, loving Heavenly Father.... This dichotomy is as old as mankind and cannot be explained in a simple sound bite or on a bumper sticker." Elder Renlund spoke about specific examples of unfairness and how to keep our faith in the face of such terrible evils. So while he spoke on examples of evil in the world, he didn't address the context of how we view the world.

Inherent in the man's question is an assumption about this world and the role and nature of God that he expected God to just do something to prevent the evil in the world. If there is something I have learned many times over, it is that the hardest mental exercise is recognizing and challenging our own assumptions. Almost everyone who considers the question, "Why does God allow such terrible things like the Rwandan genocide to happen?" fails to follow that up with the question, "What is it that makes me think that God should do anything about it?"

The simplest answer to this is that God is good, and good people should stop evil from happening, and God has the power to stop it. But the issue for the believer is that God is still there and loves us, but did not stop the evil. So from the perspective of a believer how should we resolve this issue.

To start I will ask a question to consider, and finding the answer will be left up to the interested reader.

The more interesting question is not, "Why does God allow evil to happen?", but,

"What is God doing to fix the evil that exists?"

When believers are faced with the problem of evil we seem to forget that God has already given us a framework to understand the problem of evil. Perhaps because we are so prone to view the story of Adam and Eve as a literal story that we fail to consider the symbolic meaning of the story.

Fundamentally we find ourselves in a fallen world. The name Adam in Hebrew is literally the word for humanity. From story of the Garden of Eden we learn that we, all humanity, are cut off from the presence of God. We are quite literally left to ourselves. Perhaps we do not consider the full implications of that. We, humanity, are responsible for all the evil that we do. We cannot say that we live in a fallen world, cut off from the presence of God, and then expect God to actively take charge of everything that happens in the world.

The story of the fall, especially as it is reiterated in the temple endowment ceremony, is trying to teach us the reality of the world we live in. As believers we must confront this fact, in this world there exists both good and evil, and whether we have more good or evil depends on us. In the endowment ceremony God himself does not come down to confront the evil of the world, but sends messengers.

We say that we currently live in a telestial world, and we must consider the implications of that statement. In D&C 76 we learn that those in the telestial kingdom do not experience the presence of celestial beings, but only receive "through the ministration of the terrestrial." Those in the telestial kingdom are "they who are thrust down to hell."

This means that the telestial world we live in is literally the location of hell.

In classical Christianity the standard view is that there is the earth, and then there are heaven and hell. The usually unspoken assumption is that earth is the middle point of glory. In Dante's Inferno the earth (or at least the surface) is the dividing line between heaven and hell. But in LDS theology our view is a little more lopsided. True to the view presented in the story of the expulsion from paradise, we live in a "fallen" world out of the presence of God. As explained in the Book of Mormon, separation from God is a kind of death, and "hell", or the second death, is a permanent separation from God.

From this perspective our current state is not that different from those who are "thrust down to hell." In the revelation on the Degrees of Glory the telestial glory, or our current temporary state, is the lowest degree of glory. There is not much below us since we have "fallen" after all and considering all the terrible depravities committed by humanity there is not much further for us to fall.

The classical idea of heaven and hell have worked its way into LDS theology in how we talk about the spirit world. There we speak of spirit paradise and spirit prison, but those ideas are not really found in our scriptures. In D&C 138 it mentions that all spirits, including the righteous considered their state as being in prison or bondage. It was not until Jesus appeared to the saints gathered together awaiting his coming were they given the hope that they could be released from their "prison". Even in the spirit world all of humanity was cut off from the presence of God, and we would have stayed that way if it had not been for Jesus Christ. Thus everyone, including the righteous found themselves in "spirit prison" or "hell" after their death.

This is rather interesting because in the Old Testament it does not mention separate places, such as heaven and hell, for the righteous and the sinners. There is only one place, sheol, where all the dead go. Only after the death and resurrection of Jesus could there be a division in the world of spirits to divide the righteous in the presence of God from those who are not. This means that for those who die there is no real change in their spiritual state. Thus "hell", or spiritual separation from God, is simply a continuation after death of our current separation from God.

With this context we can return to the original question, "How can God allow evil in the world?" The simplest bumper sticker answer is, "Because this world is Hell." With one exception there is nothing lower in glory, or goodness than this world. We are the furthest we can get from God.

This view of things should change how we view the world we live in. The amount of goodness or evil in the world depends on us. Through the ministering of angels, prophets, and apostles, we are shown what we must do to rise in our progression from a telestial world with all its pain and evil to a celestial and more perfect world. This is the symbolic teaching of the endowment ceremony. Because we are already out of the presence of God there really is nowhere else to go but up.

Many believers have it in their mind that God will come and cast out the wicked and thrust them down to hell. But right now, before the final judgement, there is not really anything worse than living in a world outside the presence of God. There is no worse hell to be thrust down into than to be left to witness the worst depravities of humanity. We already are in hell.

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ perhaps our message should not be "Repent or you will be punished and thrust down to hell!", but it should be, "Repent and fix the world you live in or you will be forced to continue to live in the hell of your own creation."

Whether we live in paradise or hell, that depends on us.

A New Christian Symbol

Last night President Russell M. Nelson announced a new symbol for the Church of Jesus Christ to use. The new symbol has a depiction of Jesus under an arch symbolically representing the tomb. He is standing upon a corner stone with the name of the Church on it. If we take the simplest form of this symbol there are many other meanings that we can give it. Like many symbols of religions through out the world it is very simple, but can contain intense meanings.

Here are possible interpretations of this symbol:

• It is the door of the empty tomb after the resurrection of Jesus.
• It is an open door to the Church, inviting others to enter.
• It is gateway leading us into the path of Eternal Life. The gateway is baptism, which is symbolic of the grave and of resurrection.
• It is the windows of heaven.
• It is a doorway to a new life.
• It is an open door of fellowship and friendship. Our door is always open.
• The stone is the corner stone representing Christ.
• The stone is the Rock upon which we should build.
• It is the foundation of the Church and the Gospel.
• It is the welcome mat to our homes.
• It contains the steps to the doorway to heaven.

It's a very simple symbol but can have many meanings.

How can salt lose its flavor?

Answer: It can't. And that's the point.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells his disciples,

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot." -- Matthew 5:13

Whenever this verse is discussed in Sunday School someone invariable asks the question, "How does salt lose its flavor?" Then the inevitable answer comes, "This happens when it is mixed with or contaminated by other elements." And then a discussion follows where the participants discuss the need to "keep ourselves pure" from outside influences so that we can be the "salt of the earth", uncontaminated by the world.

By thinking in it this way we are unconsciously tying it to the purity doctrine. In this sense the purpose of being the salt of the earth is to keep the salt uncontaminated by anything and everything. We don't want to dilute it, so we can't mix it with anything.

But if you stop and think about the verse and its context, that is the exact opposite of its meaning. This is an example of looking beyond the mark.

By asking the question, "How does salt lose its flavor?" we are unconsciously projecting our modern worldview onto the Bible. We are making an assumption about how to approach and interpret that verse that subtlety leads us in a wrong direction. To understand this we must know that the question "How does salt lose its flavor?" is a modern question, and was not on the minds of Christians throughout the ages.

In an ancient setting salt was salt. To those listening to Jesus they understood salt as a thing they put on and in their food. They did not think of it as a chemical element that can be mixed with other similar chemicals to change its overall composition. This understanding is a result of our modern worldview.

To people in ancient days, if a white crystalline powder tasted salty, then it was salt. If it didn't, it wasn't. That didn't mean it was mixed with impurities. The question of how the chemical salt (NaCl) could no longer taste salty was a mystery that popped up in Biblical commentaries in the 1800's. There are tales of travelers who went to Palestine and literally went around licking rocks to try and figure out how salt could lose it flavor.

Unfortunately they were being mislead by imposing a modern understanding onto the Bible.

A better way of understanding this verse is like this:

Jesus, "My followers, I want you to be like salt, but for everyone on earth. As you know salt is very important. We use it in our food all the time. What does bread taste like if you don't put salt in it? It tastes terrible and is not good to eat! What does soup or stew or meat taste like without salt? It's very bland! Do you want to eat it? No? I didn't think so!"

"So I want you to be like that! Necessary for everything, and the thing that gives flavor to the people of the earth. I want you to give everyone a reason to enjoy life and not be so bland! Just remember, that is what salt is good for!"

"If salt didn't taste salty what would we use it for? Would we use it for food? No! Would we use it for building? No! Would we use it for jewelry? No! Would we use it for anything? No! We would just throw it out like dirt!"

"I want you to be the salt of the earth. And if salt wasn't salty, there nothing else that can be used to give the earth back the flavor of salt! Without you life would be bland! Give life flavor!"

Unfortunately all that understanding just doesn't fit into a pithy little saying. But with this we get a better sense of what Jesus meant. He didn't want his followers to be untouched by the world. He didn't want them to separate themselves from everything, completely unmixed with the world. He wanted his followers to bring their goodness into the world and make life flavorful!

Hiding the pure salt in a jar so that it never is contaminated makes the salt useless! It is like a lighting a lamp and putting it under a basket! Connecting this verse to the purity doctrine is the exact opposite of its intended purpose.

Seasons of the Church

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
                          -- Ecclesiastes 3:1

In the April 2018 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ there were some changes announced to programs that had been in place for many years. These changes were warmly welcomed by many members, with a few expressing anxiety about practical implementations. In all of the changes a few scattered voices opined, "Finally we can do away with that burdensome old program!"

I have seen a few changes to Church policy over the years. During my mission we made the shift away from memorized discussions to using prepared lessons. As soon as the change was announced the American missionaries universally tossed aside the discussion booklets and said, "Hallelujah!" But some Latino missionaries took longer to change. They were accustomed to the previous method, some of them had joined the Church because of those discussions, so they were reluctant to give them up.

When the change was made in both cases it was immediately apparent that the new method worked better. We had better talks with people about the Church, and being able to really care for members instead of checking to make sure home teaching is done by the end of the month really makes a difference.

So what about the old ways? Were they for nothing? Were they the wrong thing to do?

Obviously not. At the time they were the new method. They made things easier. They improved on the old way of doing things. At one point members looked at the new method and said, "Finally we can do away with that burdensome old program!"

There is a temptation to say that if they are the wrong thing to do now, they were the wrong thing to do in the first place. I think that is a mistaken way of seeing it. The Church, the world, and society has changed in small and subtle ways, and will continue to change.

As we go into a new season of the Church there will be changes to how we do things. Policies may change. Even some things that may seem more than policy will be implemented differently in the Church. Eventually changes will be made to priesthood quorums. Right now Aaronic Priesthood quorums are tied to age. At some point they may not. The missionary program may change. How we conduct church services may change. They hymnbook is changing already.

Those changes will come and when they do, it does not mean what we did before, or what we are doing now is wrong, or counterproductive. It is just a different season of the Church. To everything, live in the season of the Church and neither condemn nor wish for what was before.

A Fundamental Disconnect in What is Important

I spend a lot of time reading a variety of views on the Church and Mormonism in general. Every so often some online community of saints or former saints who are critical of the Church whip themselves into a moral panic. They talk about all the problems with the Church and bring out a laundry list of things that must be talked about or things that every Church member should know. Whenever I spend too much time listening to the tinkling cymbals and sounding brass I listen to what the Church leaders are actually concerned about and what they are talking about I notice a fundamental disconnect between what the Church critics think is important and what Church leaders think is important.

I was reminded of this when a visiting General Authority spoke in my ward a few months ago, and again last General Conference, and again today.

Brigham Young and the Aliens on the Sun

The title for this post is something you would expect from a cheap pulp science fiction novel rather than a serious discussion about religion. But it was a topic that I was reminded of recently. While by no means is this a common criticism against Brigham Young, or the Church in general, but it is something that is occasionally brought up in mocking comments online.

Usually these comments take the form, "Brigham Young believed people lived on the sun! That's ridiculous! It's proof he was an idiot/fool/ignorant and we can't trust anything he said."

Did Brigham Young actually believe that people lived on the sun? And if he did what are we to think of that based on our current understanding of the universe?

So did Brigham Young believe that people lived on the sun? On July 24th, 1869 Brigham Young was speaking at a Church conference and as part of his un-prepared remarks he made the following statement:

"So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain."

That seem to make the case very straight forward. It's unambiguous. He said he believes it. We know from modern science that people do not live on the sun. Brigham Young was mistaken. Case closed.

Well that was a short blog post.

Except, as my favorite comedy troupe once said, context is everything.

If we are to consider the context we must first look at the general scientific context in which Brigham Young made that statement, and second consider the context within the rest of his discourse. Both contexts are very illuminating.

So what was the scientific context at the time? If you went to an "expert" or and "authority" during the mid 1800's and asked them if the sun, moon, and all the planets were inhabited what answer would you get?

The idea that the planets of the solar system are inhabited, referred to as the "plurality of worlds", is an idea that suddenly gained wide spread attention among astronomers and philosophers in the early 1700's. It had been discussed before then but it was only considered a theological question before then. But with the spread of Newtonian ideas, questions about the exact nature of other worlds suddenly became very important.

Previously the realm of the sun, moon, and stars was considered to be entirely distinct form that of the earth. The laws of nature were different "up there". The stuff that made up the heavens was just different from the stuff that made up the sphere of the earth. But the Newtonian revolution introduced the idea that the same laws that governed the earth also governed the heavens. That radically altered the way people perceived the sun, moon, planets, and stars.

New and improved telescopes helped us understand that the planets were spheres just like the earth. This precipitated the idea that not only were the sun, moon, and planets governed by the same laws, but in many ways they were just like the earth. This meant that they had oceans, seas, continents, plants, animals, intelligent beings, just like the earth.

These ideas were speculative and did not appear in any major textbook on astronomy of the time, but they were discussed and mentioned among scholars and other well read men, much in the same way the idea of wormholes and parallel universes are viewed today. They are not strictly scientific, and they do not appear in major textbooks on astronomy. But while some scholars think they do not exist, others speculate that they are possible, and they do pop up in popular literature and news.

While the concept of plurality of worlds (i.e. the sun, moon, and planets inhabited by intelligent beings) was never a major point of scientific inquiry it did show up in the writings of some influential individuals.

On April 25, 1756 John Adams wrote in his diary,

"Astronomers tell us, with good Reason, that not only all the Planets and Satellites in our Solar System, but all the unnumbered Worlds that revolve round the fixt Starrs are inhabited, as well as this Globe of Earth."

In the late 1700's the idea of the plurality of worlds was considered to be so well established by reason that Thomas Paine writing in The Age of Reason used the idea to criticize Christianity saying,

"to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air."

By the early 1800's famous astronomer William Herschel wrote:

"The sun, viewed in this light appears to be nothing else than a very eminent, large, and lucid planet, evidently the first, or in strictness of speaking, the only primary one of our system.... Its similarity to the other globes of the solar system with regard to its solidity, its atmosphere, and its diversified surface; the rotation upon its axis, and the fall of heavy bodies, leads us on to suppose that it is most probably also inhabited, like the rest of the planets, by beings whose organs are adapted to the peculiar circumstances of that vast globe. Whatever fanciful poets might say, in making the sun the abode of blessed spirits, or angry moralists devise, in pointing it out as a fit place for the punishment of the wicked, it does not appear that they had any other foundation for their assertions than mere opinion and vague surmise; but now I think myself authorized, upon astronomical principles, to propose the sun as an inhabitable world, and am persuaded that the foregoing observations, with the conclusions I have drawn from them, are fully sufficient to answer every objection that may be made against it." (Emphasis in original.)

Here we see an interesting argument from Herschel. He states that because the sun behaves just like the other planets, it must be inhabited just like the other planets. This argument, he believes, is so obvious that it is "fully sufficient to answer every objection that may be made against it." This is a good example of a logical conclusion stemming from the Newtonian revolution.

A central assumption of the new wave of science was that the same things we observe on earth can be observed in the heavens. Because the sun had many of the same characteristics as the earth it was natural to assume that the sun was inhabited just like the earth.

This idea was taken a step further in 1837 by a popularizer of science named Thomas Dick who used the population density of England to estimate the population of the Earth, the moon, the planets along with all of their moons including Saturn's rings, along with the sun. His calculations assumed that all the sun, planets and moons, including Saturn's rings, had continents and oceans. Again this was based on the assumption that because the heavens were like the earth, all things we observe on earth were in the heavens.

But how could these learned men think this? Didn't they know that the sun was a giant ball of hot gas and quite impossible of supporting life? Didn't they know that the moon had no atmosphere?

It is easy for us to look back with hundreds of years of scientific observations and incredible advancements in telescope technology and say, "Obviously...." But back then it was not so obvious. It had only been a few hundred years since astronomers realized that there were mountains on the moon. And the discovery of mountains on the moon confirmed the growing assumption that the heavens were just like the Earth. Hence the "seas" (Mare) on the moon. It was not until the end of the 1800's that telescopes were advanced enough to cast serious doubt about the existence of oceans and even atmosphere on the moon.

But what about the sun? Why would astronomers think that the sun could be inhabited?

While astronomers certainly worked out that any life on the sun would be subject to intense bright light, this was right when the modern study of spectroscopy was just beginning. Absorption lines were first discovered in 1814, but it was not until 1859 that these absorption lines were first associated with specific chemical elements. That is, it wasn't until 1859 that scientists could even discuss, scientifically, the composition of the sun. It was at the same time, and mostly by the same scientists, that we began to understand the concept of black body radiation. This allowed us to measure the temperature of the sun, and is to this day the exact same method we use to measure the temperature of all stars.

The Newtonian idea that the heavens were just like the Earth had only been confirmed up until then. And while this added even more evidence to the list of reasons why the heavens were just like the Earth, it was the beginning of the end for that assumption. Unfortunately for Herschel, his argument was not the final word, and his reasoning could not "answer every objection that may be made against it."

Over the next 100 years we made many more discoveries that greatly undermined the idea of the plurality of worlds. The first to go was the idea that the sun and moon were inhabited and then later the dream of men from Jupiter and Saturn. The Martians and Venusians were the last to go. But before they did they inspired a generation of science fiction writers.

While we look back on science fiction from the very late 1800's and the 1900's as quaint, simplistic, and "Obviously they got it wrong." We forget that they were not writing fantasy. They were writing science in a fictional setting. They were dealing with the possible, and not with the imaginary.

In 1952 the scientist and author Isaac Asimov began a series of books about a character named David Starr who had many adventures all over the solar system. In the books he travels to Mars and meets Martians, and travels to the oceans of Venus. Later when the books were collected into an anthology in the 1970's Asimov wrote an introduction in which he apologized for getting the science wrong. It was only after our probes to Mars, Venus, and the other planets that the idea of (current) life on the other planets of the solar system died out as a matter of science.

That these old conceptions of life on the moon, the planets and the sun were wrong is only obvious now, and as such are frequently put on the same shelf as fantasy. But they were once a matter of science.

While these ideas never rose to the level of "settled science" they were a matter of discussion and debate, and at the end of the 1800's they captured the imagination of a generation of authors. But with more knowledge a great portion of the speculation passed from science into fantasy.

So how does this affect our view of the past? What about those who thought that the sun, moon, and planets were inhabited just like the Earth? Does this misconception invalidate everything else they said and did?

Does Uranus some how cease to exist and do telescopes cease to function because William Herschel thought the sun was inhabited? Is all past and future work of the Royal Astronomical Society invalidated because their first president once had an idea that he thought was sound, and later was shown to be implausible? Are the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution invalid because John Adams thought the moon was inhabited? Is Washington DC somehow not the capital of the US because John Adams heard the arguments of the astronomers of his day and was convinced by them? Just because someone though something was common sense, and it later turned out not to be so, does that upend all things that we know?

A similar set of questions can be asked about Brigham Young. Was he somehow ignorant to accept the statements of astronomers of his day? Does the fact that he did not know everything somehow invalidate his work to lead the Church? Does God cease to exist because a prophet was free to exercise his own mind in trying to understand the universe? Do we expect God to remove the agency of His servants just to spare the bruised egos of a few doubting critics 150 years after the fact?

In our approach to what we know and what we do not, and how we grow in our knowledge and understanding, we must remain humble. There were certain things, the Constitution, the science of astronomy, that were not invalidated because someone connected to them once thought something that later proved to be wrong, nor are the organizations they helped found called into question because they operated on incomplete knowledge.

This realization, that men of science can be mistaken, is especially relevant because it was precisely the point of Brigham Young's talk back in 1869 when he mentioned the men in the sun. If you read it and consider the context you will find very little to criticize and perhaps more to think about.

Parables and Big Fish: Rereading Jonah

In Church lessons when we talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan the discussion centers on what we learn from it, and how it applies to our lives. Sometimes the discussion centers on why Jesus chose a Samaritan to be the protagonist in his parable, but the question of historical or factual accuracy never comes up. In talking about the parable we do not ask if there really was a historical Samaritan who stopped to help a man who was left for dead on the side of the road. Neither do we argue that a Samaritan would never actually stop to help a Jew, nor do we question Jesus for having the priest and the Levite walk by without stopping. Those questions in the story do not distract us from the point of the parable which is that we must treat everyone, even people we may not like, as our neighbor.

We do not mistake the parable for an actual story that must be analyzed for its historicity or whether or not the characters were based on real people. Even though the story is not historical we do not consider it to be untrue. We recognize the purpose of the story is not to convey history but to teach a moral.

This sets the parable of the Good Samaritan apart from some of the other stories in the New Testament. For example the story of Jesus’ baptism is not presented as a story with a moral, but as a historical event. With this story it is appropriate to discuss where exactly it took place, even to point out that it happened because there was much water there. For the story of Christ’s baptism it is appropriate, and probably necessary, to consider the historical context, while the parable of the Good Samaritan can be told independent of the historical context.

In an interview with LDS Perspectives Podcast Benjamin Spackman talked about the concept of genre in the Bible. He made the point that the Bible is a collection of many different stories, prophecies, teachings, laws, sermons, and histories. In essence it is a mix of many different genres and while it may be easy to separate some of the different genres, sometimes we can mistake the genre of a particular book or passage in the Bible and that can lead us to misunderstand the Bible.

If we were to focus our discussion of the Good Samaritan on whether or not it was historically accurate we would miss the point, that it is a parable, or a morality tale. If we were to talk about the baptism of Jesus as only an inspirational metaphor then we would be missing the obvious indicators of it as a historical event.

While some things in the Bible are clearly labeled as a parable or a prophecy or history, there are some things that are not clearly labeled. It is these things that can sometimes cause confusion. If we treat something as literal history when it is a parable, teaching tool, or a social commentary then we run the risk of looking beyond the mark and lose the intent of what we find in the Bible. If we make this mistake then we will go looking for historical events that never happened. We might get caught up in a pointless debate about whether or not there actually were any Samaritans who traveled on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and miss the point entirely.

While it may seem silly to debate the historicity of the Good Samaritan, there are other stories in the Bible that were written to teach a moral and provide social commentary, and not be literal history, but are unfortunately interpreted as history. One such story is the story of Jonah.

For many members, discussions about Jonah center on analyzing the motivations and actions of him as a real man, as well as whether or not someone could actually survive for three days in the belly of a whale. That is, the central concern that we have when we discuss Jonah is the historicity of the story. Sometimes we are more concerned with confirming the literal fulfillment of an apparent miracle than we are of learning the central message of the story. While Jonah was a real person, the actual book of Jonah never presents itself as a literal history, and there are some subtle things about it that set it apart from all the other writings of the prophets.

To give Jonah a little perspective we have to realize that Jonah, the historical man, lived less than 50 years before the Northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by Assyria, which capital city was Nineveh. The book of Jonah was not written by Jonah, and was most likely written after Israel was destroyed by armies from Nineveh. So whoever wrote the book of Jonah was making a somewhat ironic point by having Jonah go to Nineveh. In the story everyone, including the pagan sailors and all the illiterate citizens of Nineveh, obeyed God's commands. Everyone, that is, except the Israelite. The one who is supposed to be the most faithful and chosen of God is consistently less faithful than the illiterate (i.e. does not read the scriptures) and superstitious sailors and citizens.

These things, and a few others, mark the story of Jonah as a parable or a social commentary. It is not trying to pass itself off as literal history. For some this would seem to undermine the story of Jonah, but recognizing the genre of the Book of Jonah no more undermines it than recognizing that the story of the Good Samaritan as a parable destroys its lessons and power to teach. But by understanding it for what it is, we can get over the big fish and understand the message of Jonah.

Cheating at Connect the Dots: Failing to see the whole picture of Mormonism

Recently I was reading an article by a historian of Mormon history and it got me thinking about playing connect the dots. You see, playing connect the dots is easy... if you ignore most the dots. Consider the image below. It contains a number of different color dots. The question is, can you see the star in the dots?

How about now? Can you see the star? All I have done is emphasize a few important dots, and now all I have to do is connect the dots.

With the dots now connected the star is easy to see. Sure the dots aren't perfectly aligned with the star but that's only because I didn't take the time fully flesh out the star. With a little more work the misalignment could be fixed and the minor discrepancies could be smoothed over. Only those who are extremely nitpicky will complain about the misalignment, and that only distracts from my point that there is a red star in there.

So why am I talking about a manufactured star and connecting the dots? As historians approach history, by definition, they do not have all the facts, nor were they impartial observers of the totality of events. It is the job of a historian to take as much information as possible and attempt to build a coherent image of the past, or at least a single person or event, based on as much information as possible. Historian effectively play an extremely complicated game of connect the dots.

Their work is very similar to mine, I cannot go directly and observe stars and galaxies close up, nor can I see how they behave over millions and billions of years, so I am reduced to playing a very complicated game of connect the dots.

But in these games there are certain rules. It is easy to connect the dots of history into just about any natural progression of events after the fact. But in doing so we have to be careful not to ignore those things that undermine the point we are trying to make.

For example, I could use the Declaration of Independence, Shays' Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Civil War, and the modern Tea Party to make the case that the founding principle of the United States is rebellion and distrust of government. I could probably write a fairly convincing argument, backed up with quotes from Thomas Jefferson, centered on the idea that to be American is to rebel.

But in order to make this argument I would have to ignore many other important founding principles of American society, such as representative democracy, constitutional government, separation of powers, personal liberties, and English common law. A similar argument regarding many other aspects of American society showing a coherent progression of history culminating in the latest manifestation of that defining characteristic. In fact most modern political positions attempt to do just that by tying current debates to what are assumed to be foundational principles.

Whenever we do this we run the risk of taking a few minor points of history and trying to superimpose a particular overall shape or interpretation to it. This is even more tempting when a few of the points are not just minor, but seemingly dominate the historical map (just like in the second image above). If I were to make the case that rebellion runs deep in American society I could make that argument quite persuasively using well known events such as the Revolutionary War, but to say that the United States is founded on rebellion ignores the fact that the United States was not organized from rebellion, but under a constitution formed out of democratic compromise. And it ignores the fact that the vast majority of American history did not involve rebellion, but democratic debate and the application of constitutional law.

So when I recently read an article by Grant Shreve entitled How Mormons Have Made Religion Out of Doubt, I thought about how he was connecting the dots. In his article Shreve makes the case that "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded on the idea of an evolving scriptural canon." While this is certainly true because it is a large and important point in LDS thought, he connects this central idea to other contemporary and historical events in such a way that he is effectively playing connect the dots by blatantly ignoring other large and just as important parts of LDS thought.

Shreve uses the story of James Colin Brewster to try to show that "If the church seems to have lost its way, a new revelation may be just around the bend." and that "The legacy of James Colin Brewster and numerous other Mormon dissidents lives on in the Remnant, a diffuse international movement of disaffected Mormons." This Remnant organization that Shreve sees as a natural product of LDS though, "answers the doubts many Mormons harbor by offering more revelations and additional scriptures."

Thus Shreve takes the idea of an open canon and makes the case that these historical and contemporary dissident movements are simply a natural extension of LDS thought. But in making this argument Shreve ignores other important points just as integral to LDS thought. Points such as priesthood authority and keys, and church hierarchy. He does briefly acknowledge these things, but they are not mentioned as foundational and fundamental to LDS thought.

While Shreve uses the concept of the open canon to make his point he completely ignores the actual content of that new canon. Just as someone might argue that the United States was founded on rebellion, they would have to ignore the fact that the United States is actually founded on constitutional democracy. They would have to ignore the bulk of US history and law.

The concepts of priesthood authority and church hierarchy are acknowledged by Shreve, but he views these not as foundational but later additions where Joseph Smith sought to "consolidated revelatory power in himself and a select cadre of elites." Furthermore, the structure of the church is only described in negative terms such as "elaborate", "complex" and made of "byzantine bureaucracies" which "disrupted the mystical and communal experiences of Mormonism’s salad days."

Thus the point that Shreve is trying to make is that the impulse to have new mystical revelations is the natural state of Mormonism, with new prophets popping up "if the church seems to have lost its way" to provide new books of revelation. Thus, based on this reasoning, the Remnant movement is truly following the principle started by Joseph Smith, and the elaborate, complex and byzantine bureaucracies of the modern LDS church only serve to stifle the true expression of Mormonism.

Unfortunately this game of connecting the dots blatantly ignores much of the rest of the content of Mormonism. The "consolidation of revelatory power" was not a late development imposed by Joseph Smith, but rather was an early and foundational principle. If we ignore this fact, we fail to see the whole picture of Mormonism.

Nephite Hymns

Just like every other culture in the world the Nephites had their own songs and would sing as a form of religious observance. In the Book of Mormon there are several references to singing (see Mosiah 2:28, Mosiah 18:30, Alma 5:9, Alma 26:8, Moroni 6:9). Except perhaps the psalm of Nephi, there is nothing obviously set apart as a hymn, but there is no indication that Nephi's psalm was used as a hymn in the Nephite church.

So what were the hymns sung by the Nephites? It is possible that they used some of the psalms found in our Old Testament, though they may not have had the Davidic psalms. Still, there are two places where Mormon records that the Nephites sang, and Mormon may have recorded at the very least the names of the hymns sung.

Just a few years before Jesus visited the Nephites they were engaged in a massive war with the Gadianton Robbers. After the final victorious battle with the robbers the Nephites took the leader of the Gadiantons and executed him. At this point Mormon records,

"And when they had hanged him until he was dead they did fell the tree to the earth, and did cry with a loud voice, saying: May the Lord preserve his people in righteousness and in holiness of heart, that they may cause to be felled to the earth all who shall seek to slay them because of power and secret combinations, even as this man hath been felled to the earth. And they did rejoice and cry again with one voice, saying: May the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, protect this people in righteousness, so long as they shall call on the name of their God for protection. And it came to pass that they did break forth, all as one, in singing, and praising their God for the great thing which he had done for them, in preserving them from falling into the hands of their enemies. Yea, they did cry: Hosanna to the Most High God. And they did cry: Blessed be the name of the Lord God Almighty, the Most High God." (3 Nephi 4:28-32)

Here Mormon reports the words that were said and then mentions that "they did cry", "Hosanna to the Most High God" and "Blessed be the name of the Lord God Almighty, the Most High God". While it is certainly possibly that the multitude did yell out those phrases, it is more likely that those phrases refer to the names of specific hymns that were sung. In fact the previous verse explicitly mentions that they were singing.

For example, if I were to say, "Today in church we proclaimed together High on the Mountain Top and The Spirit of God", that would not mean everyone in the congregation said in unison the exact words "high on the mountain top, the spirit of God", but that everyone pulled out their hymn books and sang together hymn number 5 and hymn number 2.

A similar possibility exists for "Hosanna to the Most High God" and "Blessed be the name of the Lord God Almighty, the Most High God". Those very well may be the names of common hymns known by the Nephites.

Interestingly, in this context if the word translated as "cry" refers to singing, then that means we have the complete text of two short Nephite hymns. The first, apparently written for the occasion, being,

"May the Lord preserve his people in righteousness and in holiness of heart, that they may cause to be felled to the earth all who shall seek to slay them because of power and secret combinations, even as this man hath been felled to the earth."

And the second,

"May the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, protect this people in righteousness, so long as they shall call on the name of their God for protection."

From the perspective of our culture these are not what we normally would think of as typical subject matter for hymns, but these are Nephites we are talking about, not European Christians.

With this in mind we can look at other parts of the Book of Mormon and find three additional possible Nephite hymns. In response to King Benjamin's address his people "all cried aloud with one voice" and together said (or sang),

"O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created heaven and earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of men."

And then later they said (or sang),

"Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. And we, ourselves, also, through the infinite goodness of God, and the manifestations of his Spirit, have great views of that which is to come; and were it expedient, we could prophesy of all things. And it is the faith which we have had on the things which our king has spoken unto us that has brought us to this great knowledge, whereby we do rejoice with such exceedingly great joy. And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us, all the remainder of our days, that we may not bring upon ourselves a never-ending torment, as has been spoken by the angel, that we may not drink out of the cup of the wrath of God."

As some critics have pointed out it is unrealistic for people to spontaneously say the same words in unison, but this trouble is mitigated if these words were sung to a tune that everyone was familiar with. This may seem odd to us, but singing is one way to get everyone to repeat the same words in unison.

The third possibility is found in 3 Nephi 11. When Jesus came to visit the Nephites Mormon records,

"And when they had all gone forth and had witnessed for themselves, they did cry out with one accord, saying: Hosanna! Blessed be the name of the Most High God! And they did fall down at the feet of Jesus, and did worship him."

This leads us to another possible title to a Nephite hymn, "Hosanna! Blessed be the name of the Most High God!" So this gives us possible titles of three hymns and the text for four.

Interestingly enough this leads us to another event that may record the songs sung. When Jesus had his triumphal entry into Jerusalem shortly before his crucifixion the Book of Matthew records that,

"A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,"
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

While we might assume that the crowd was shouting these three phrases over and over, based on what we learned from the Book of Mormon, the crowd that gathered to accompany Jesus into Jerusalem may have had three songs or psalms that they were singing. In fact, the second of the three is a line that comes from Psalm 118. So we may not be able to positively identify the other two, but the crowd following Jesus and spreading palm branches in his way was possibly singing Psalm 118.

What makes this even more interesting is that the Book of Matthew was written to a Jewish audience. So the author would have assumed that those who read it would be familiar with Jewish hymns (psalms), including Psalm 118. Thus mentioning that the crowd sang Psalm 118 would have brought the words of it to the minds of those reading the story, and they would have immediately seen the connection when just a few verses later,

"Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
    the Lord has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes’[h]?"

Some times we reference hymns and the words we say carry extra weight because of the hymn they are associated with. But these subtle references are lost if we are not familiar with the songs they came from. Although we may not know all the hymns sung by believers from a previous era we can catch glimpses of them if we look. When we do find them it adds richness to the context from which we get the scriptures. The people become more alive and more real. The structure of authors' words begins to make sense. The subtle connections become clear, and we begin to see it through their eyes.

Frank Cannon and the Three Principles of the Church

This is an excerpt from the book Under the Prophet in Utah by former US Senator from Utah, Frank J. Cannon (with extensive help from co-author Harvey J. O'Higgins), the son of LDS apostle George Q. Cannon. This book was written in 1911 many years after Frank Cannon had left the church and after several years as the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune where he wrote extensively against the church and its policies. What is interesting is the first hand accounts of some of the crucial deliberations among church leaders about the decision to discontinue the practice of polygamy. This excerpt contains a conversation between Frank and his father George, who at the time was a councilor to President Wilford Woodruff. It gives an account of what President Cannon thought was the important work of the church and how it would prove the salvation of the country.

Keep in mind the time that this was written. There are certain words, such as socialism and communism, that carry significant weight now because of significant historical events in the 20th century. This happened before any of that. Also keep in mind that Frank Cannon was a strong proponent of a certain brand of political thought that has no direct equivalent in our current political discourse, though it shares certain words and emphasis with some parts of our current politics.

The closest analogue we have today is libertarianism, which, to reduce it to something woefully simplistic, is to always take position against government in order to preserve personal liberties. Frank Cannon's approach was to always take a position in favor of government in order to preserve personal liberties. This necessitated removing all outside influence from government, whether from corporations, banks, businesses, unions, or churches. It is a position almost entirely missing from current political discourse, and one that can easily be misunderstood.

By 1911 the political party that Frank Cannon had been associated with was disbanded. The party was founded on the ideas of social liberalism and anti-Mormonism (keep in mind that those terms are currently loaded with additional ideas that were not present in 1911). It is in this context that the book was written specifically to attempt to disrupt the political influence of the church in Utah. It was a very different time, very different circumstances, and a very different recent history, though we can see similarities to our situation today.

********************************

[George Q. Cannon] talked a few minutes, affectionately, about family matters, and then—straightening his shoulders to the burden of more gravity—he said: "I have sent for you, my son, to see if you cannot find some way to help us in our difficulties. I have made it a matter of prayer, and I have been led to urge you to activity. You have never performed a Mission for the Church, and I have sometimes wondered if you cared anything about your religion. You have never obeyed the celestial covenant, and you have kept yourself aloof from the duties of the priesthood, but it may have been a providential overruling. I have talked with some of the brethren, and we feel that if relief does not soon appear, our community will be scattered and the great work crushed. The Lord can rescue us, but we must put forth our own efforts. Can you see any light?"

I replied that I had already been in Washington twice, on my own initiative, conferring with some of his Congressional friends. "I am still," I said, "of the opinion I expressed to you and President Taylor four years ago. Plural marriage must be abandoned or our friends in Washington will not defend us." Four years before, when I had offered that opinion, President Taylor had cried out: "No! Plural marriage is the will of God! It's apostasy to question it!" And I paused now with the expectation that my father would say something of this sort. But, as I was afterwards to observe, it was part of his diplomacy, in conference, to pass the obvious opportunity of replying, and to remain silent when he was expected to speak, so that he might not be in the position of following the lead of his opponent's argument, but rather, by waiting his own time, be able to direct the conversation to his own purposes. He listened to me, silently, his eyes fixed on my face.

"Senator Vest of Missouri," I went on, "has always been a strong opponent of what he considered unconstitutional legislation against us, but he tells me he'll no longer oppose proscription if we continue in an attitude of defiance. He says you're putting yourselves beyond assistance, by organized rebellion against the administration of the statutes.' And I continued with instances of others among his friends who had spoken to the same purpose.

When I had done, he took what I had said with a gesture that at once accepted and for the moment dismissed it; and he proceeded to a larger consideration of the situation, in words which I cannot pretend to recall, but to an effect which I wish to outline—because it not only accounts for the preservation of the Mormon people from all their dangers, but contains a reason why the world might have wished to see them preserved.

The Mormons at this time had never written a line on social reform—except as the so-called "revelations" established a new social order—but they had practiced whole volumes. Their community was founded on the three principles of co-operation, contribution, and arbitration. By co-operation of effort they had realized that dream of the Socialists, "equality of opportunity"—not equality of individual capacity, which the accidents of nature prevent, but an equal opportunity for each individual to develop himself to the last reach of his power. By contribution—by requiring each man to give one-tenth of his income to a common fund—they had attained the desired end of modern civilization, the abolition of poverty, and had adjusted the straps of the community burden to the strength of the individual to bear it. By arbitration, they had effected the settlement of every dispute of every kind without litigation; for their High Councils decided all sorts of personal or neighborhood disputes without expense of money to the disputants. The "storehouse of the Lord" had been kept open to fill every need of the poor among "God's people," and opportunities for self-help had been created out of the common fund, so that neither unwilling idleness nor privation might mar the growth of the community or the progress of the individual. But Joseph Smith had gone further. Daring to believe himself the earthly representative of Omnipotence, whose duty it was to see that all had the rights to which he thought them entitled, and assuming that a woman's chief right was that of wifehood and maternity, he had instituted the practice of plural marriage, as a "Prophet of God," on the authority of a direct revelation from the Almighty. It was upon this rock that the whole enterprise, the whole experiment in religious communism, now threatened to split. Not that polygamy was so large an incident in the life of the community—for only a small proportion of the Mormons were living in plural marriage. And not that this practice was the cardinal sin of Mormonism—for among intelligent men, then as now, the great objection to the Church was its assumption of a divine authority to hold the "temporal power," to dictate in politics, to command action and to acquit of responsibility. But polygamy was the offence against civilization which the opponents of Mormonism could always cite in order to direct against the Church the concentrated antagonism of the governments of the Western world. And my father, in authorizing me to proceed to Washington as a sort of ambassador of the Church, evidently wished to impress upon me the larger importance of the value of the social experiment which the Mormons had, to this time, so successfully advanced.

"It would be a cruel waste of human effort," he said, "if, after having attained comfort in these valleys—established our schools of art and science—developed our country and founded our industries—we should now be destroyed as a community, and the value of our experience lost to the world. We have a right to survive. We have a duty to survive. It would be to the profit of the nation that we should survive."

But in order to survive, it was necessary to obtain some immediate mitigation of the enforcement of the laws against us. The manner in which they were being enforced was making compromise impossible, and the men who administered them stood in the way of getting a favorable hearing from the powers of government that alone could authorize a compromise. It was necessary to break this circle; and my father went over the names of the men in Washington who might help us. I could marvel at his understanding of these men and their motives, but we came to no plan of action until I spoke of what had been with me a sort of forlorn hope that I might appeal to President Cleveland himself.

My father said thoughtfully: "What influence could you, a Republican, have with him? It's true that your youth may make an appeal—and the fact that you're pleading for your relatives, while not yourself a polygamist. But he would immediately ask us to abandon plural marriage, and that is established by a revelation from God which we cannot disregard. Even if the Prophet directed us, as a revelation from God, to abandon polygamy, still the nation would have further cause for quarrel because of the Church's temporal rule. No. I can make no promise. I can authorize no pledge. It must be for the Prophet of God to say what is the will of the Lord. You must see President Woodruff, and after he has asked for the will of the Lord I shall be content with his instruction."

Now, I do not wish to say—though I did then believe it—that the First Councillor of the Mormon Church was prepared to have the doctrine of plural marriage abandoned in order to have the people saved. It is impossible to predicate the thoughts of a man so diplomatic, so astute, and at the same time so deeply religious and so credulous of all the miracles of faith. He did believe in Divine guidance. He was sincere in his submission to the "revelations" of the Prophet. But, in the complexity of the mind of man, even such a faith may be complicated with the strategies of foresight, and the priest who bows devoutly to the oracle may yet, even unconsciously, direct the oracle to the utterance of his desire. And if my father was—as I suspected—considering a recession from plural marriage, he had as justification the basic "revelation," given through "Joseph the Prophet," commanding that the people should hold themselves in subjection to the government under which they lived, "until He shall come Whose right it is to rule."

Why did Nephi pray?

In response to my post on Laman and Lemuel my mother asked, "Why did Nephi pray?" In my previous post I explained that, based on the culture of the time, Laman and Lemuel may not have considered it proper to pray to ask God to know something. It would have been more in keeping with their culture to seek out a seer, or someone with an item used for divination. Without a seer to answer their questions the only valid way of understanding prophecy would be to figure it out through reason. When reason was inadequate they had no way of gaining further insight into revelation from God.

When we approach the story we usually take note of Laman and Lemuel's failure to pray and identify with Nephi's apparent natural understanding about the role of prayer in revelation. But when we consider Nephi's reaction to his father's vision we have to keep in mind that not only are we reading it through our cultural lens, but also we are reading the version of the story that Nephi wrote many years later. By the time he wrote his story Nephi may have been much more comfortable with praying to receive knowledge through revelation, but it may not have been that way at the time.

We can deduce that there was one particular scripture that impacted how Nephi viewed revelation and prayer because he quoted it to Laman and Lemuel. In 1 Nephi 15:11 Nephi says,

"Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you."

This verse was evidently on the brass plates, but is not found in our Old Testament. We do not know when Nephi first encountered this verse, but it may have only been read by Lehi and his family just a few days before. In retelling this story many years later, Nephi carefully incorporates this verse into his exchange with his brothers (see how verse 10 sets up how verse 11 applies to the situation). But at the time Nephi may have only recently learned of that verse, and much like Joseph Smith with James 1:5, took it seriously. The same verse may not have had the same impact, or even been noticed by Laman and Lemuel.

But in 1 Nephi 11:20-21, Nephi mentions that his brothers were humbled and began to ask sincere questions. They must have found that verse convincing, but that would also mean that they were not familiar with it, so Nephi must have also just learned that verse when they acquired the brass plates.

So why did Nephi pray? He did it because he read the scriptures and found out that he could. It is "obvious" to us now, and it was obvious to Nephi later in life, but at the time it was a new thing.

Laman and Lemuel Did Not Think of Themselves as Apostate

In Sunday School lessons in the Church when we discuss Laman and Lemuel we tend to portray them as faithless, scheming, disobedient reprobates who still mummer and complain even after they are shown miracles and angels. Many seem to have a cartoon image of Laman as the stereotypical cartoon villain, complete with evil goatee, and Lemuel as his whiny, dimwitted sidekick.

This simple portrayal seems so obvious, because how else could someone see an angel, experience miracles, hear the word of the Lord, and still not believe? Obviously they had to be faithless schemers or why else would they reject the plain truths as taught by Nephi? They don't even bother to pray, and if they can't even do something as simple and fundamental as that, then obviously they don't have faith and care nothing for religion and eternal truths. Right? Are they really just the faithless, wayward sons of a good man and a prophet? 

Previously I have written about the complex social and religious environment that produced what we now know as the Old Testament. The time of Lehi was an interesting period in history. There was major political upheaval, a previous king of Judah had pushed through some major religious reforms, new histories were being compiled, and differing strands of religious thought were vying for supremacy.

If we read Jeremiah in the Bible we can get a sense that there was disagreement between groups of priests about political matters. There seems to be one group who were very much in support of the king and another that supported Jeremiah. While we may look back and say, "Obviously they should have supported Jeremiah." For those living at the time it may not have been so clear since those opposed to Jeremiah included the High Priest. But even this "picking sides" was not so straight forward since even those who opposed Jeremiah held him in high regard. When the king learned that Jeremiah was in prison he arranged for him to be rescued.

We learn from Nephi that his father Lehi supported Jeremiah, while Laman and Lemuel probably supported the monarchists and the High Priest. One of the harshest criticisms that Lehi leveled against his sons was that they were planning to do to him what the Elders had done to Jeremiah. This was not a criticism that Laman and Lemuel took lightly, but in fact took very seriously. By reading Nephi's account we can easily get the impression that Laman and Lemuel never listened to their father. But if we read carefully we can see that they listened to his prophecies and followed his commands. They did after all go get the brass plates, and they did attempt to buy them with all that they had. They did hold reverence for the word of God.

While some have tried to explain Laman and Lemuel's obedience to their father as some manifestation of the high regard that their culture gave to obedience to parents, that seems like a gross over simplification of the culture at the time, and still does not explain why they chose to follow Nephi at many points.

When we consider the interaction between Laman, Lemuel, and Nephi we unknowingly impose our modern biases on the story. To illustrate this let us consider perhaps the most over used but entirely misinterpreted interaction between Nephi and his brothers.

In 1 Nephi 8 we have recorded Lehi's famous vision of the tree of life. Immediately after this experience Nephi "desired to know the things that [his] father had seen" and thus sought and received the revelatory experience recorded in 1 Nephi 11-14. Upon returning to the camp where his family was staying Nephi found Laman and Lemuel debating the vision of their father. Prompted by Nephi's questions Laman and Lemuel responded, "Behold, we cannot understand the words which our father hath spoken concerning the natural branches of the olive tree, and also concerning the Gentiles."

This response prompted Nephi to ask the question that forms the basis of so many seminary, institute, Sunday School lessons, Sacrament meeting talks and question prompts in church manuals.

"And I said unto them: Have ye inquired of the Lord?"
"And they said unto me: We have not; for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us."

To us, Nephi's question is so blindingly obvious, and Laman and Lemuel's response so typical of non-believers that it may not occur to us that Laman and Lemuel could very well have a rational reason for not praying to know the interpretation. In our culture we are accustomed to the concept of praying. For us the most fundamental way we interact with the divine is to pray. It is so ingrained in our culture that we do not realize that in a different culture it may not be so obvious.

In our culture it is natural for us to ask, "Have ye inquired of the Lord?" We would think it very odd to go looking for someone who could use divination to answer our questions. In our culture the practice of using peep stones, divination in cups, and seemingly magical items is not considered socially acceptable or valid for divine communication. But in the culture at the time of Lehi not only was divination acceptable, but firmly entrenched as the preeminent method of divine communication.

In 1 Samuel 23 there is the story of David on the run from King Saul. Wanting to know the King's plans, David consulted with the priest Abiathar. In order to get an answer, David asked Abiathar to bring the ephod (part of the high priest's clothing associated with the Urim and Thummim) so that they could receive revelation from the Lord. There are other instances where questions directed to the Lord could not be answered without the use of the Urim and Thummim.

At the time of Lehi praying to ask the Lord questions was not ingrained in the culture. If someone wanted to ask the Lord a question they would have to find someone with a sacred object to be used for divination. Thus for Laman and Lemuel, if they wanted to know the interpretation of Lehi's vision, an obvious course of action would not be to pray and ask, but to find someone with a Urim and Thummim, or similar item, that could divine the answer.

When Nephi begins to explain the vision Laman and Lemuel are not passively listening, but actively asking questions. In fact they ask better questions than you would find in most Sunday School lessons about Lehi's vision. These are not the actions of non-believers who failed to ask questions. They did apply themselves and attempt to understand the vision, but because of their culture it did not occur to them that they could pray and ask the Lord for answers. They were keeping firmly within their religious tradition and thought that these were answers that could only be answered by a seer with some sacred object for divination.

It is particularly telling that after this experience, but before they traveled into the desert Lehi was given the Liahona, which was a sacred object that could communicate the word of the Lord. It was like the ephod for David, or the Urim and Thummim for the priests. It validated Lehi's position as a seer in the eyes of Laman and Lemuel. As a seer that had an object that could he could look into and see sacred communications, Lehi and his visions were established as divine. Hence Laman and Lemuel could follow him into the desert.

Also years later when they were in danger of starving in the desert Laman and Lemuel murmured against Lehi, partly because he had failed to use the Liahona. They eventually followed Nephi because he could use the Liahona, the sacred object that provided divine communication.

Sometimes there are things that are "obvious" to us and we wonder how anyone could be so dimwitted not to see the obvious. But it is important to remember that people like to think they have a good reason for doing what they do. For Laman and Lemuel praying to know the interpretation of a vision was according to their culture "weird". Using a sacred object to divine the answer was just as normal and obvious to them as praying is to us.