Orphaned

I was asked (JS: Joseph Smith, BY: Brigham Young): “…it appears that you believe that JS communicated with God and Jesus, but you don’t believe that JS practiced polygamy. Yet at the same time it appears that that you believe that BY and his friends did practice polygamy and that was corrupt. So if I understand that correctly, the question I have is, what religious community do you associate with, if any? Community of Christ? The Remnant? No community?“

I responded with the following:

Good question. I’m a little bit of an orphan. I still attend sacrament meeting with the LDS church, but see them now as not too different from any of the other Christian denominations – with one big exception, namely, they embrace the Book of Mormon and the revelations that came through JS. Those two points are huge for me and tip the scale (for me) in favor of the Mormon denominations (any of them, except for those still practicing polygamy) over other Christian denominations. What happened with Mormonism, in my view, follows the pattern that Jesus described in his parable wherein the kingdom of God is likened to a sower who came and sowed good seed. But then, the enemy came and sowed tares, which when they first sprang up, could not be distinguished from the good blades of wheat. So, the master of the vineyard was obligated to let both grow together until the wheat could be distinguished from the tares. I think this parable applies to all ages of the earth and to every attempt God has ever made to sow good seed on the earth. And the supreme challenge that humans have faced from the beginning of time is to learn to discern between truth and error and to embrace the truth.

As was the case with King Noah, who overthrew the order of things established or observed by his father Limhi [meant to say Zeniff] (removing former priests and placing his friends in those positions as well as taking concubines and growing fat on tithes from the people), I believe that Brigham Young did precisely the same thing. We know he had dozens of concubines and that he was insanely rich (for the time) by the time he passed away. Later pressure by the U.S. government compelled the Brighamite LDS church to abandon polygamy, which they eventually did (extremely reluctantly). The LDS church has now officially denounced 4 perversions that we know (from the Journal of Discourses) were openly taught and/or practiced by BY (polygamy, Adam-God theory, blood atonement, and unworthiness of individuals of black African descent to hold the priesthood).

I would like to think this could be likened to those post-King-Noah individuals who forsook the practices of King Noah and began to repent and recover the religion practiced by Limhi [meant to say Zeniff]. But, the abandonment of polygamy was clearly an issue of political expediency. A decade or more of illegal polygamist marriages by the LDS church demonstrates that we still clung tenaciously to BY’s teaching that plural marriage was essential for salvation in the celestial kingdom. I think that blacks and the priesthood was largely driven by political expediency, although I do believe that president Kimball was sincere in his feeling that the priesthood should be extended to all worthy males.

I think the LDS church should want to embrace the idea that polygamy and these other perversions started with BY and that the nature of his leadership and teachings were an aberration not condoned by God. I think they should want to follow the path that Alma the elder did in forsaking the perversions practiced by their former king and return to the simplicity and purity of the former religion practiced by their people. In this way, the LDS church could dump a massive amount of baggage without hypocrisy and without hiding their history. Seriously. Just unequivocally throw BY and his friends under the bus and say that what he taught and practiced were perversions and that we embrace what is found in the Book of Mormon and the known, contemporary, and self-published teachings of Joseph Smith (e.g. those in Ehat and Cook’s The Words of Joseph Smith, and in the Times and Seasons, etc). Let’s rebuild from there, the same way Alma the elder rebuilt a beautiful and pure religion by going back to what was taught and practiced before king Noah.

But, the LDS church is in a terrible conundrum. To take the path I’ve described above, they would have to concede that they have no certain claim to authority through BY and his successors. But, the Book of Mormon provides a pattern for coming out of such a conundrum. What did Alma the elder do before he was baptized and began baptizing at the waters of Mormon? He repented and he called upon God to grant him authority to baptize. We could do the same. We could say that we don’t embrace the perversions that BY taught and practiced and that we want to repent and be baptized properly. That was the pattern demonstrated by Alma the elder. Then, what happens after baptism? The Book of Mormon provides that pattern as well. Nephi said that once you have entered in by the gate by baptism and after you receive the holy ghost, it’s the holy ghost that will show you all things that you should do – not some pope or president. The LDS church is crippled by a cult of personality wherein no one can follow whatsoever things the holy ghost will show them, because ultimately the only thing they need to do (and are allowed to do) is follow the “pope” that they have set up for themselves. The LDS church is a spiritual welfare state.

So, as you may suspect from everything I’ve written, ideologically I most identify with the remnant movement. But, even there, I can’t say I see eye to eye with all the various subgroups that also identify with the remnant movement. I’ll take one prominent example for illustration. I think that Rock Waterman is somewhat representative of a decent-sized subpopulation of the remnant movement that I’m talking about (see his endless memes on FB for illustration). There is a strain within the remnant movement that is politically far to the right and seem to embrace a lot of conspiracy theories that abound on the far right. I don’t relate well with this subgroup, at least on political issues, no better than I relate with, say, John Dehlin and LHP on the topic of JS and polygamy.

So, this is why I think of myself as something of an orphan when it comes to my religious practice. I’ll embrace what I like from the LDS church and the remnant movement as readily as I’ll embrace what I like from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. I think that all of these religious movements follow the same pattern as the parable of the sower of good seed and the enemy that sowed tares. In the allegory of the olive tree in Jacob 5 of the Book of Mormon, the master of the vineyard broke off branches of the tame olive tree and planted them in many locations. I think this is representative of God visiting many people throughout the world in all ages of the earth. But, good fruit only sprang up momentarily. Ultimately, the inevitability of corruption by man (priestcrafts, as Nephi described at length) overtook the entire vineyard. The allegory does not say that good fruit abounded and remained. It appeared momentarily and then was corrupted.

As with physical things, there seems to be an entropy in this world that likewise brings disorder and decay in the domain of spiritual things. Human beings, on the whole, will always corrupt. And the master of the vineyard never ceases striving to bring about the good fruit that existed in the beginning. The allegory in Jacob 5 makes it clear that there will never be an abundance of good fruit. It will always be only a small portion of the fruit in the vineyard. The rest is man’s perversions or corruption of the original religion that existed in the garden of Eden.

The LDS church has preserved, in its temple endowment, the notion that the world in which we currently reside is the telestial kingdom. If you read D&C 76, you see that the description it gives of the telestial kingdom is an exact match of the world we live in right now. We should not be surprised if attempts to preserve the good fruit are no more successful than trying to dig a deep hole in the wet sand of a beach. If you’ve ever had the experience, it’s a lost cause. You get down 4 or 5 inches and the hole just starts refilling because of the wet sand flowing back into the hole. The world in which we now reside was never expected to have a high yield of good fruit.