This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
This quote from Napoleon Bonaparte is right. We can’t go back in time to know what really happened in history. Yet history is extremely important for our belief system and we need to believe in something. We need to know if Joseph Smith translated gold plates, if Jesus was resurrected, and if Adam really existed, because these are real tangible events that either happened or didn’t happen, and if they didn’t happen then our belief system is myth. If they did happen, then everything in the scriptures is true and the church is truly led by God.
Our History Controls Us – But this quote has another implication: if you want people to agree upon something, you can control their beliefs by manufacturing history. Indeed, one of the most powerful propaganda tools at any dictator’s disposal is the history book. Control over history is a struggle that is constantly playing out in culture wars, and nowhere is this more true than with the church and our Latter-day Saint ancestors. Powerful groups are desperate to make us resent our history of polygamy, the racial priesthood policy, and everything else. They convince us of their version of past events. It is not coincidence that South Park aired their famous “Mormon” episode around the time that the gay marriage tussle between the church and the radical Left began heating up. It’s not coincidence that Hollywood started pumping out TV shows about polygamists, a “Book of Mormon” musical, and inserted “Mormon” villains in so many productions. Wealthy, powerful organizations are financing propaganda campaigns in mainstream media, social media, and academia to manufacture our history. It’s gotten so bad, even pro-church newspapers and academics perpetuate highly biased history. But I think the most effective ecclesiological propaganda is found in mainstream media like South Park, because it can’t be avoided. The bias and vitriol is so intense and sweeping, it is becoming impossible to sort out truth.
False History Is Everywhere – I have found that even the most popular scholars in ‘Mormon history’ rely on dubious quotes, poor sources, and biased research which ends up pulling the narrative in an Antimormon direction. They report matter-of-factly what somebody in some 19th century newspaper said they heard Oliver Cowdery say, as if salacious gossip is a basis for historical accuracy. One example of poor research I recently discussed is the life of Jane Manning James, an early African-American member of the church. A scholarly-sounding source in a Salty Tribune article claimed she was sealed to Joseph Smith and Emma, “’not as their spiritual child but as their eternal ‘servitor’.” This led Antimormons on Reddit to call Jane Manning James “Joseph Smith’s house slave.” Now, it is pretty much established among scholars that she was sealed as Joseph Smith’s servant–Wikipedia states it as fact–but when I actually researched the sources for this claim, I found them all to be unreliable. There is no compelling evidence that this sealing actually happened; and if it did happen, the context of her relationship to the family was certainly not comparable to slavery. The success and magnificence of Jane Manning James’ life has unfortunately been flipped around as powerful groups have built an Antimormon narrative out of it.
But that is how it is with so many issues in church history. When I research evidence that Joseph Smith used a ‘seer stone’ to translate the gold plates, I likewise find them all unreliable. I find zero compelling evidence that Joseph Smith used anything except the Urim and Thummim to translate the Book of Mormon, and yet it is settled history within and without of the church that he used a seer stone that he had dug up in a well. Poor research, lack of academic rigor, and possibly ill intentions have led even pro-church scholars to adopt a narrative that I personally find unlikely. The same goes for Oliver Cowdery’s alleged divining rod. The only evidence that Oliver Cowdery ever touched a divining rod is based on one single rabidly-Antimormon source talking about Oliver Cowdery’s father and what scholars read into D&C 8. But that has been enough for both pro-church and anti-church scholars to decide on their narrative.
This is why I have grown wary of all but a handful of scholars. A historian’s job today to spin history to fit an agenda, unfortunately. The norm for “Mormon scholarship” is to pick out snippets of quotes from some Antimormon website to push whatever agenda they are up to. But I suppose this has always been the case when it comes to religion, and always will be. Didn’t Satan, the god of this world, followed Adam and Eve around everywhere and whispered lies into their ear? What was he telling them, I wonder? Perhaps he was whispering false history. We should expect likewise to have the servants of Satan follow us around and take it upon themselves to be our “teachers,” to hang on our backs like infernal ghouls. But they have become so successful as of late! Their job becomes a lot easier because we are taught in public schools from a very young age to believe anything that is taught by a “historian,” and their false history is so pervasive.
Discover History For Yourself – We simply can’t trust the word of scholars anymore–even those who are pro-church. We have to do the best we can with the information we have. We must find out the answers ourselves.
Here are a few tips:
- The first danger is when people assume why something happened in history. Russian philosopher Leo Tolstoy found even the most well-accepted history ends up being suspect or downright false: “History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.” Even if you do find compelling evidence for what went down, “History does not reveal causes; it presents only a blank succession of unexplained events.” There are any number of reasons for why something may have actually happened, and nobody is still around to ask about it to find out. Don’t judge people’s motivations. You can’t go in a time machine and find out how someone really was. When it comes to things like racism and sexism, we simply do not know all of the circumstances that led good people to make the choices they did. Maybe you would have made the same choice, or a worse choice. Try to determine historical facts only. It reminds me of the excellent 1952 cartoon Lambert the Sheepish Lion. A confused stork accidently gets mixed up and leaves a lion cub with a mother sheep. The mother sheep raises the lion cub as her own, and he is relentlessly teased by the other sheep for being different. He is shamed for his aggressive nature, his claws and teeth, and his difficulty with doing the things normal sheep do. But one day a wolf shows up and hauls mother sheep away to eat her. Something snaps in Lambert and he tears the wolf to pieces, after which he is hailed by all the other sheep as a hero. Nobody had been aware of Lambert’s true history. If they had, the sheep would have certainly respected him. They believed something false and mocked him for it. But his true history could not be avoided, and it ended up saving the sheep. I think this relates to the scorn that gets thrown at Latter-day Saints on a daily basis. This is how it is for our nature as divine children of God.
- Keep in mind that you are accessing history through a lens. Bias is inevitable in any source. Like a landscape painting, there will always be some difference between reality and what is being portrayed, depending on the author’s bias. The artist could be painting a saint from a mere man, or making a demon out of a saint. You know all those pretty pictures from the Hubble telescope you see of distant far away galaxies? Those are actually black and white, and an astronomer decides based on the brightest part of the image what the colors probably are. Usually they colorize it wrong. The same goes for black and white snapshots from our history: much of what you think about history is layered upon by historians and modern culture’s general attitude about the issues involved.
- If you don’t like something Brigham Young or Joseph Smith did, remember that in many ways their civilization and their world view was more advanced than ours. Antimormons act so high and mighty, casting aspersion from an ivory tower and acting like anyone from the 19th century was primitive and unevolved. Well, what if we have devolved since those times? What if your modern morality is wrong? What if many of our moral imperatives in modern times are wrong?
- Some historical sources are flat-out fabricated. Mark Hoffmann was a famous Antimormon who fabricated documents from Joseph Smith and other early leaders to spread Antimormon narratives. We do not know how many undetected forgeries he created, or how many other Antimormon forgers there were like him. Many fabricators have been caught, but it could be that many of these dubious quotes that Antimormon websites use to reveal our “true” history are pure fabrications. Maybe all of them are.
- Look for context. One of the most effective Antimormon tactics is to take snippets of quotes out of context. They do it all the time now. It’s gotten to the point, if an Antimormon doesn’t take a “Mormon” quote out of context, I mean, do they still make a sound? It’s all about context. It works because people are too lazy to find out what a person is really talking about. We live in a generation where context is routinely stripped from people’s words to destroy opposition ideology and push an agenda. We are used to it. The answers become much clearer if we shed modern ideology from our own bias and look at all context involved.
Do Not Accept The Antimormon Frame
Antimormons take snippets of quotes out of context is because it is useful to build a narrative. Everything is about “narrative” now instead of truth, and that is a big problem. With the hard-core Antimormons, they don’t even care about truth! The only truth to them is their ideology, and narrative is whatever version of events is convenient at the moment to persuade people of that ideology. For all their cries of “gaslighting, gaslighting,” their version of events constantly shifts to feed whatever ideology they hold This is because their narrative has one aim and one aim only: to tear down the church.
Don’t Be Defensive – We must not get caught in this trap! The knee-jerk reaction for apologists is to believe whatever presents a glowing image of the church. In their rush to spin the narrative about seer stones maybe apologists don’t even stop to think that maybe the entire frame of discussion is false. It takes faith in objective truth to disregard narrative for a moment and accept evidence for what it is. Our initial reaction to an argument should not be “but, but.” An attitude of defensiveness has unfortunately swept “Mormon apologetics” and led them to seek for a counter-narrative rather than shed the Antimo narrative completely.
Defensiveness is the reason for virtue-signaling. Many apologists appeal to the “we are all just human” line and excuse the terrible things Joseph Smith did because: he was just “acting as a man.” They feel the need to virtue-signal the same way Antimos virtue-signal. But placing narrative over truth only leads in one direction: away from truth. Maybe Joseph Smith really was commanded to be sealed to multiple women and maybe it was a good thing? I mean, it is hard enough to judge the motives of a family member who does something we don’t like, but when you judge a complete stranger who lived hundreds of years ago, how could you possibly know? The irony, of course, is that all the judging comes from the same Antimormons who constantly lecture us about “you can’t judge me.” And then they champion “alternative lifestyles” while condemning Mormon polygamy. They are all over the place, but it works for them because it doesn’t have to make sense. It only has to be a narrative that justifies their ideology for the moment. They are apologists for their perverse ideology, and we need to make sure that we don’t become apologists for our ideology in kind.
Defensiveness tends to lead to the adoption of the Antimormon frame because the natural tendency is for people to believe what is convenient. Human nature is to adapt to our surroundings. We live in an age of drive-thru Starbucks, internet porn, prescription drugs, and technological solutions to every problem in life. Human nature is to justify our behavior to fit in with our secular friends, to blame others for our problems, avoid moral shame, and to follow the crowd. Very few people bother to fact-check the news. Few are willing to be subject to international shame for standing up for our moral standards. Few are capable of stepping outside of the bubble they were born in and really thinking independently. Plenty of ex-Mormons say they step outside of the bubble, but is adopting the mentality and morality of America’s secular majority really independance? Is it really bravery to resign your minority identity and become another “NPC” majority? Being a Latter-day Saint is true counter-cultural independence. Naturally, we find it very difficult to go against the grain of so many cultural standards that are now openly hostile towards us. The pressure is thick and constant for us to adapt to popular culture, to become one of them.
There is a demon whispering the narrative in our ears and we must not dwell upon it. We need to turn our heads and listen for another spiritual source, which is the soft voice of the Holy Ghost. The Catholic church teaches that the first two stages of demonic possession is manifestation and then oppression, and I think there may be some truth to this. First we get a manifestation which we consider to be answers to our issues but which fill us with fear and hatred. He gives negativity which may actually have some truth in it. And then comes horrible events which make us hate life because we didn’t get the full picture. I’m not saying we should ignorantly ignore issues or avoid both sides of the argument. I’m saying we must avoid the whisperings of the evil spirit persistently pushing the Antimormon narrative. You can address these issues from in a holy and sacred place, on your own terms and with your own framing.
One great thing about the Book of Mormon is that it addresses this struggle head-on. Lehi boldly preached the truth in Jerusalem and was ridiculed for it. They even threatened his life. But instead of focusing on narrative, being an apologist, or acting defensively, he made the hard choice and left Jerusalem behind. His family was saved from destruction because they didn’t get caught up in the current-year narrative. We may not be able to leave popular culture behind physically, but we can expel it from our lives. Avoiding mainstream media, avoiding public schools, avoiding modern pop music, avoiding social media, etc. We should not be ashamed of ourselves for avoiding Babylon, because this is what we need to do to avoid the destruction of those who get swept up in it. But we need to replace these things with classic alternatives. Positive media, independent schooling, classic music, positive social groups, etc. Or just wallow in the barren wilderness to some degree as Lehi did. This is important to do because it will allow us to avoid the consequences of popular culture’s wickedness: the depression, loneliness, broken families, vices, debt, etc. It allows us to access history objectively and use it as a tool for our own interests, instead of the interests of those powerful groups that direct popular culture.
What Is The Skeptic’s Alternative? – Even within Christian schools, scholarship is saturated by popular cultural ideology. Go to a typical religion course at any American university and you will receive lectures about the lack of evidence for the Temple in Jerusalem, how the gospel is derived from Sumerian mythology, and how evolution disproves Creationism. A young student’s natural reaction is to be defensive and cling to their faith. This isn’t a bad reaction but it leads to two bad choices: you can either ignore information or you can try to conform your faith to their narrative. But once you shed their narrative completely and seek objective truth, you can stop feeling defensive. Bravely step into the unknown.
It helps to ask what is the motive for their narrative? What is the narrative’s end? Antimormons are famous for avoiding discussion of their own ideology. They don’t present any kind of alternative solution. It is all about tearing down the church. They attack from behind a wall and don’t give us anything to attack them back. Always ask what their alternative is. Theology professors present a secular narrative as if it conforms with religion, but if Genesis is based on a Sumerian legend, what does that say about the rest of the Bible? It means it’s all false. So what do they present as an alternative basis for moral truth, for justice, and everything else that God provides in religion? They won’t say straight out, but they insert their alternative ideology subtly into their lectures. They talk about modern social causes, social justice and progressive beliefs. These are the ends of their frame, and these are the things we should be investigating when we consider their arguments. What are the ends of their ideology? We should always get both sides of every argument, but skeptics don’t want us to see their side. They only want us to see the Potemkin village they have erected. We try to avoid seeing the negative ends of their ideology because it is depressing to dwell on disgusting things, and because we were taught “if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.” But it helps us withstand their tempting rhetoric if we understand where it leads. It helps us doubt our doubts. Antimormonism is like a movie set created to give an appearance. Tear down the fake facade and see the real fruits of their ideology hiding behind. It isn’t a pretty picture.
| See also: | Tips For Defenders Of The Faith |
Use Raw Information Sources – I avoid the historian’s filter as much as I can and turn to original sources. JosephSmithPapers.org makes it easy with scans of original church documents and minimal editorializing. Raw information is the best way to get objectivity. The difficulty with this is:
- The amount of material takes a long time to read through. As a kid, I tried to read through History of the Church volumes–an entire encyclopedia–but there was simply too much. You’ve got to focus on what is most important and start there.
- It takes even more time to gather context so you can understand what they are talking about. There are all kinds of events and things they talk about that we don’t know about, and a quick search on Wikipedia gives us only a highly biased understanding. There is little explanation, for example, of the fierce pro-slavery motives Antimormon mobs in Missouri. It takes many years and many volumes of text to get a basic grasp. So be patient.
- A lot of raw information is still unavailable. The internet has helped a lot. But it has also helped spread forgeries and fake information. Wikipedia is one of the worst.
Faithful sites like FairMormon.org are good places to start to get context and piece it all together. There are some things I disagree with Fair Mormon about, but they usually give a good summary of the issues. Ultimately, we have to answer our own questions and gather the original information for ourselves with minimal outside influence.
Start Young – I did a lot of research as a kid, but I doubt I would have done any of this if my father hadn’t insisted on me reading seven chapters from the scriptures every week–straight through, even the boring parts of the Old Testament. I hated it and tried to get out of it as much as I could. I didn’t learn much from the book of Numbers, but it taught me to do the boring research for myself, and that was invaluable. It taught me the patience necessary. Antimormons insist that they did hours and hours of research, that they are scholars on Mormon history, and they know everything about everything, but I really doubt that they did much more than read a few Antimormon websites. How much have skeptics really studied the Old Testament? How much church history have they read? Little or none. Even scholarly Antimormons who have read through volumes of raw text–did they really study it or were they just skimming through to find snippets of quotes to bolster their narrative? It takes many hours of study and years of waiting for an answer to a question to show up. So start as early as possible. Have faith in your children as my father had faith in me that making him read boring text will eventually pay off, and that he will have the fortitude to get both sides of the argument and come to an intelligent conclusion.
Dealing With Items On Your Shelf
We All Have Doubts – The Ex-Mormon communities have come up with a term: “items on your shelf.” This refers to issues with the church and gospel that we are afraid to confront or we don’t even realize, but they stack up until they become too numerous for the psyche to handle. Then the shelf suddenly collapses and all of the issues cause a drastic change in one’s identity.
We fear to confront our doubts, it’s true. It is not healthy to ignore these issues, and it is true that they will stack up until they become too much to handle, and then the collapse may ruin your life. It is prideful to pretend like we never doubt, to just throw concerns in the back of the mind and avoid them. We don’t want to rustle feathers with friends in the church so we stay silent, or we try to put on a facade of perfection. But we all have doubts, and there is a healthy, constructive way to express these doubts. The first is to realize everyone, even the Bishop, has things they are uncertain about and issues that bug them. It is okay to talk about them in a humble and constructive way.
Celebrate Repentance – We tend to assume that shortcomings are the result of a misdeed and that repentance is only necessary when we commit sin. But I have found that I usually use repentance when I haven’t even done anything wrong. Or even at times when I am a victim. I simply lack light, and repentance brings light. Sometimes I have violated a commandment and that has led to a darkened soul, but either repentance can be a daily occurrence that addresses all of the issues in life, like a spotlight investigating all of the dark corners in a house.
Get Help – A healthy family relationship is built on this trust and communication, where members feel safe talking about these things and are able to actually help each other out. Everyone needs family, friends, and mentors to look up to for answers. When we do not have this open line of communication, we develop what is called an “authoritarian personality.” An authoritarian personality was taught never to question, never to explore, and never to doubt. An authoritarian personality did not have a parent or someone helpful to talk to, so they seek a strong dictator figure to make everything safe for them. You can see this in Antimormons who complain that they were never told about polygamy in Sunday School, as if it is the church’s responsibility to answer every little question they have in life. They crave a strong dictator figure to tell them everything to believe and to do. But the church is not like that. The church is about empowering people to govern themselves. This empowerment starts with quality mentorship that helps a child express himself and figure things out on his own. If you were not blessed with this opportunity, it is never too late as an adult to talk to someone who can help.
Base Spiritual Conclusions On A Spiritual Premise – Ancient heathens believed in Zeus because they saw lightning flare out of the sky. When some unexplained phenomenon occurred, they drew a spiritual conclusion from it. We like to think we are so advanced and civilized, but I don’t think much has changed, because people draw spiritual conclusions from a physical premise all the time. Climate science is routinely used to make people think they are sinfully destroying the earth, for example. I mean, I’m all for being good stewards over nature, but when they ban grocery bags and plastic straws to save the planet it has reached the level of superstition. Faith does not begin with physical observation, because when it does that makes it superstition. The problem is people don’t recognize when something is faith, because faith is a bad word in our secular culture. People don’t know when they are mixing up the spiritual and physical. Faith needs to be rational and a scientific process, and so much Antimormon rhetoric I see is illogical, emotional, and irrational. The Antimormons who call us “superstitious” are superstitious themselves. Avoid superstition by starting with a spiritual premise for your faith or doubt.
Express Your Emotions – This is not to say emotion should be suppressed. On the contrary, I think we in the church suppress our emotion way too much. Perhaps we are fearful that we are mistaking promptings of the Holy Ghost with our own emotion, which certainly does happen. But emotion is a powerful torrent of water that cannot be blocked for long. With most Antimormons I observe, their rhetoric is justification for deep emotion that they are afraid to confront. They try to sound very intellectual with all kinds of sophistry, but emotion is behind everything they say. They ridicule people who say they “feel” the Spirit, because they are afraid of emotion themselves. It is important to respect your emotions and give them a place for expression. The shelf breaks when intellect is out of balance with emotion; but this imbalance is not magically cured by the breaking of the shelf. We must look at how we feel about history and find a process to be at peace with things like polygamy, racism, etc.
Allow For Complexity & Simplicity – Unfortunately, some of the most popular advice for people doubting is to “simplify.” They say to “pick out a favorite scripture and live by that.” I think this is terrible advice, because “simplifying” can just mean ignoring context and that is usually the biggest problem with historical investigation. Skeptics and Antimormons are often very reductionist, and they cherry-pick whatever is useful for their agenda. A skeptic’s “favorite scripture” tends to be “judge not,” and they use it to justify their unhealthy behaviors. No, we need to recognize the complexity of the gospel and provide full context.
On the other hand, complexity can become an excuse to excuse unhealthy behaviors as well. “It’s complicated.” Post-modernists often do this. In my writing, I try to strip my articles of anything that doesn’t need to be there. Yet they still turn out to be 10-15 pages long. There is a lot to the gospel, and yet it is very simple and should be easy to explain. When someone uses sophistic language that sounds like a college professor, or they take paragraphs to explain a small point, or if they are contradictory and don’t really make sense, these are clues that they are twisting history by making it overly complicated.
Avoid Entanglements – History is like a telephone pole that becomes loaded with wires running every which direction. It can quickly become too much, or there could be not enough wires to power the houses below. You need just the right amount of wires on that telephone pole, and you need to keep them from becoming entangled. But just as spirituality becomes inappropriately entangled with physical science, we often entangle the church with all kinds of personal issues that aren’t really relevant. Antimormon forums are overflowing with sob stories about things that aren’t even the church’s responsibility. This reinforces the authoritarian personality’s need to have a dictator do everything for them instead of exercising their own personal agency. Sorting out what issue goes in its proper place is like sorting out a bunch of tangled wires. Socialists use history to assign blame to one class of people for victimizing or “disenfranchising” another class of people. This is why they ban symbols, pay reparations, and tear down statues. History is a convenient weapon because it is so easy to manipulate history books to assign blame. Figure out where an issue starts and where it should lead, and detangle it from the other issues. It’s a simple process but takes arduous work.
Do Not Demand Conformity – Another suspect piece of advice from that LDS Living article is to “create spaces of inclusion.” This might be taken to mean the church should alter itself to conform to different beliefs. Many churches have sought to widen their tent to gain more members, but then their beliefs and culture becomes so vague that it loses all meaning. Sunday service becomes Facebook feel-good slogans. Sure, everybody has things they would do differently at church, but our job as members is to conform to it, not to demand it be “inclusive” to what we want. I am always disturbed at General Conference season to see everybody broadcast their wishlist of changes. The interesting thing about the conformity narrative, is that people who seek “inclusivity” end up being the most intolerant people of all. It’s like the guy from the big city who moves into a suburb and then starts changing local building codes to be like the city. This “diversity” causes the entire world just ends up being like the big city, with the same buildings and stores everywhere you go. I think the healthy thing is to recognize that everyone at church is different–has different political views, different life outlooks, different origins–and recognize this as an opportunity to learn from each other. But as we know from 4 Nephi, it is pretty much inevitable that any social difference will lead some class to think they are better than some other class and try to dominate them, and the class that screams about victimization is usually the class doing the dominating. Loud voices often cite some historical grievance, and history is used as a weapon–“inclusivity” is just an excuse. This is why we include ourselves in the space of the church–we don’t seek to create other spaces.
Confront Painful Experiences – We all have painful experiences that we are afraid to confront: bullying, shame, abuse, feelings of no worth, etc. When these experiences get swept under the rug, they often become too painful to ignore and then when the shelf breaks they get blamed on the church. But doubt can be a good thing. Our doubts are helpful because they stem from these unaddressed issues and they can help us figure out what the problem is. Why does polygamy touch a raw nerve? Often it is because of internet porn or feelings of no self-worth.
Ever read a verse in the scripture and have a feeling rush over you that it wasn’t true? Or you read some Antimormon rhetoric and just KNOW they are right about us? Usually this is your subconscious having an “aha moment” because it finally pieced something together, and it had been struggling for so long to make sense of internal turmoil. Your realization is probably partially true. But the puzzle is far from complete. Maybe your subconscious feels like it is, but there’s still a lot of work to do. It takes a lot of bravery to confront this verse in the scripture or the Antimormon rhetoric that makes you doubt–to figure out how it relates to your painful life experience and to methodically find the full answer. Your heart has been struggling to have unrecognized feelings confronted. That is the first step.
For me, this moment came as a youth when I was reading in the bible that angels are not married in heaven. It stung my heart and I felt sure that Jesus was saying there is no marriage in heaven. But I confronted it when my Bishop soon afterward asked me in an interview if I had a question about the gospel–anything at all. I asked him about it very nonchalantly, and he didn’t have an answer for me. He urged me to find an answer for myself. It took years and lots of study, but I did find my answer. It required intense research, but I also had to confront why this was such an issue for me. I had to humbly accept my feelings of doubt and and recognize that eternal marriage was not something I felt inherently worthy for. I did not envision a reality where I could be a strong patriarchal man with that level of intimacy, love, and faith in another person for eternity. This was not something I wanted to admit. Once I realized this about myself I could develop a strategy to turn that around about myself, and the Holy Ghost at that point eagerly helped both find the answer intellectually and turn my own life around. I reconciled my heart and my intellect because I realized it was all about my personal issues.
Confirmation Bias – There are many logical fallacies skeptics use in their manufactured historical problems with the church. Another big one I haven’t mentioned is confirmation bias. They take phrases from the Book of Mormon, do a search in Google Books, and conclude that some random 18th century book with the same one or two phrases must have been where Joseph Smith was inspired to make it all up from. It’s absolutely ludicrous, totally goofy, but this is literally what Antimormons on their forums and private discussion groups are doing. Confirmation bias is very powerful because it is like the gambling addict who pulls the lever “one more time” because he is convinced that he will strike it big. Any perceived similarity or inconguency makes them feel that the Book of Mormon without a shadow of a doubt is made up. Often they twist words and allow eisegesis to make the two books appear similar, like that goofy map in CES Letter that compared Book of Mormon geography with Upstate New York.
Love Not The World
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15)
I have a neighbor who in the cool of the morning when the birds are chirping and the breeze softly blows likes to turn on his loud radio and ruin the pleasant silence with right-wing talk radio. Now, I have nothing against rightwing talk radio, and I like to keep up with current events and politics myself, but it’s pretty jarring when you step outside to greet the warm morning sun and get hit with Mark Levine’s shrill screaming voice. I have my own time and place to hear and think about such worldly things. People who dwell on politics all the time tend to be stressed and miserable, and we need our peaceful mornings. But when I think about it, don’t we need to face the problems of the world on their terms and ours? We don’t get to pick when and where the world gets involved with our lives. The men who got drafted in World War 2 and experienced the miseries of war didn’t get a warning before bombs were dropped on Pearl Harbor. Perhaps many of those soldiers loved the world before the war, but I doubt they did afterward. They would have laughed if I had complained about a noisy neighbor. I think our modern comforts, selfish lifestyles, a narcissistic culture establish a fantasy world where we deny harsh realities, and this greatly tints how we view history. It is so easy to criticize Brigham Young when you weren’t there getting shot at by pro-slavery mobs, watching your baby freeze to death at Winter Quarters, or walking step by step across the continental United States.
Loving the world means getting duped by the fantasy of the world. It’s like the Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey who were disarmed by the sensuous fantasy and wasted away their lives. Probably 99% of western civilization is high on lotus flowers, either literally or figuratively. It’s so easy to float through life doing what is expected of you, and these people may seem to have it good, but in the end it is a life unfulfilled and lacking eternal happiness. History can be the cold splash of water that wakes you up from the fantasy and reveals to you how real life really is. We are told that once we wake up, then the love of our Father in Heaven may dwell in us. This love can have some harsh realities, but our Father tells it like it is because He loves us. Most of all, “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” The fantasy of the world comes at a price, and the fuel we put into it will eventually run out, but being eternity-minded runs on living waters which do not run out.
We need to be willing to pull off the fantasy masks of the world we are living in right now and see the ghouls underneath. Face the problems of the world. Hate popular culture, hate its values, hate its art, hate the direction our generation is going, hate the oligarchy that directs it, hate how it exploits innocence and mother nature, and hate the ruinous waste that it leaves behind. Most of all, hate their ideology of universal salvation, the continuance of Lucifer’s plan that would “save everyone” yet exalt no one. It is the whore of the earth, and we need to recognize it for what it is. It is so easy to join the crowd from the balcony of the great and spacious building and whine about polygamy, but that is living in a fantasy land that will eventually come crashing down, and then the history of polygamy will be the least of your worries.
Again be very careful how you bundle the cords of the gospel with modern issues, because there are many who bundle the Lord’s anointed with worldly issues and become apostate. They “go back to the roots” of the church and then end up wacky polygamist cultists. The church is not the world. Some become misanthropes and purge the flesh with barbaric customs because their disdain for the world becomes fear. We have the priesthood of God restored, and modern prophets who ought to be the mainstay of our journey through this storm. So many people are lost and driven by those who twist history and in other ways seek to control the masses. Are you any better than them? Recognize your limitations and admit to the impossible power of the influence popular culture has on you. Humbly admit that the only solution is priesthood power and the church.
People are very predictable. We like to think we have control over our lives, but I’m starting to think “free agency” takes a much smaller role than I ever thought. The prefrontal cortex which allows a person’s free will to determine behavior is a very tiny portion of the brain. It’s much bigger than in a cat’s brain or a dog’s brain, but it is still small. Studies have found that the body anticipates behavior before the brain even has made a decision or directed the body to perform that behavior. In other words, the body already knows what you are going to decide. Some say this is proof of pre-destination, but I think rather it is a lot like a computer program that has pre-set functions built into the shell to quickly operate before the program even calls for them. The body determines based on past behavior and built-in instinct what decisions are most likely, and usually it turns out to be right, but we are still capable of coming to a different determination. But still, this is undeniable proof that we very rarely actually do decide anything different than the road that has been laid out for us. It is highly unlikely for an average person born into today’s popular culture to become a secular, Starbucks-drinking, corporate worker. It is highly unlikely for an average person born into the church to decide independently, truly apart from popular culture’s influence, to drink coffee, leave the church, and turn apostate. I find that those who turn apostate and say it was an independent decision based on historical research only use historical talking-points as justification for the easy decision to join the comforts of Babylon, even if they are 100% sure they made the decision for themselves.
True independent thought requires immense disciple and sacrifice. But I am convinced that this is what we need to find our own testimony and to know things for ourselves. Please don’t think that I’m speaking down to “apostates” from my own ivory tower, because I believe we all have our own doubts and become little apostates all the time. Like Peter, we are all liable to deny the Christ when push comes to shove. Every day most of us are filled with apostasy, and we need the weekly refreshment of the holy sacraments to renew our bodies and our spirits, a death of the old and regeneration of the new. We are constantly stripping away the old man and growing into a new future. The question is what direction are we growing towards, are we headed toward the sun or away from it? The Antimormons who are stuck in a spiral of self-loathing and simmering bitterness took a small step on the right journey when they tried to confront historical problems, but they just can’t seem to make it to the next step. They are mired in a hell. People like me keep trying to give them answers and help them along the way, but they need to take independent steps, and that means independent willpower and pursuit of faith. History is a key part of this journey because it is fundamental to personal and community identity. If we don’t know our own identity that opens us up to possession by evil spirit. Doubt and apostasy is just one of the steps along the virtuous path. The fact that you habitually doubt or fail when it comes to historical church problems–or whatever area of life you may be failing in–is indication that this is the path forward and the area that you can eventually excel at, the area that needs additional focus and resources. So please don’t get stuck in the Antimormon rut. Keep moving forward and try harder.