Musings of an Independent Mormon-Christian-Agnostic-Theist

A hodgepodge of thoughts about scripture, faith, and my conception of God (sparked by a question on my blog about accepting/rejecting scripture):

I know there are some Christians who take every word in the Bible as though it literally is God speaking. I'm not that literal. Sometimes scripture can challenge us, and sometimes we must challenge scripture.

“The word of God” has always been communicated and mediated through human filters. It naturally follows from that realization that some of the words we've canonized are not God’s words at all, but rather the words of men speaking in their weakness and cultural contexts--as well as their biases.

The Bible says all kinds of horrible things that men attribute to God. Just look at the Old Testament. How comfortable are you really with the god of the Old Testament? (Especially compared to the god of the New Testament.) On a good day the god of the Old Testament is indifferent. On a bad day he is angry and on a really bad day he is genocidal. Though you have to search it out, you can find the loving God in the OT ("my hand is outstretched still") but it's a matter of discerning for yourself which scripture is most inspired and the more accurate depiction of God.

Leviticus says divorce is an abomination, eating shrimp and shellfish is an abomination and the punishment for them is stoning. It also says homosexuality is an abomination. Yet we mortals pick and choose which scriptures we want to emphasize, accept (either literally or metaphorically) or use to beat others up with.

I can’t accept all scripture as equally inspired. Much of it rings true and resonates with my conscience and inspires me to love God and my fellow man more and better. Some of it sets off alarm bells, which helps me recognize through Spirit what is good and true and whether it represents God. I believe each individual has the responsibility to discern for themselves, through the Spirit, truth from error--even in the scriptures. And even then, that's a subjective (and often messy) process.

Honestly, most of the time it's not even that I choose to accept or reject individual scriptures; rather, it's about the lens I (or we) use to interpret scripture. Various Christian denominations have long disagreed about interpretation of scripture--even among themselves. I'm in the camp that believes the most important lens Jesus showed we must ultimately use to look at scripture is the lens of compassion (and the primary commandments to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.) If what we read insults our conscience (genocide, rape, or any other gory details that men did, supposedly in the name of God) then that is a good sign it doesn't likely reflect the compassionate God worthy of our worship.

Some people think in black and white terms that you either accept all scripture as inerrant or it cannot be trusted at all. I say that's ridiculous. There is no such thing as an inerrant or infallible standard to discern the mind and will of God. It doesn't exist. So faith--authentic faith--is filled with all kinds of uncertainty. Uncertainty makes some people really uncomfortable so they come up with all kinds of crazy apologetic arguments with which they cloth themselves to comfort themselves. As for me, I've learned to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity and lean into that vulnerability rather than run from it. When all is said and done, it actually makes me more humble and compassionate to realize we're all in the same boat trying our best to follow our God-given moral compass. We're no better than anyone else; we're all in need of the same grace.

While some Mormons might take comfort in thinking this proves the need for prophets, the thing I've come to see is that prophets are just as fallible as anyone else. (And I can name some specific examples of times when instead of clearing things up, they muddied the waters even more. Hence why I put more faith and trust in individually going directly to the Source.)

History has led me to lower my expectations of prophet-leaders, since they've arguably been wrong and misled on as many big issues as they've been right. Regardless of one's beliefs or expectations of prophets (whether very modest or completely unrealistic), one cannot escape the individual work of discerning/confirming for yourself that what you're reading/hearing actually represents the Divine will or not. One must never go on autopilot and outsource that responsibility at any time to any other individual. When all is said and done, I still like what Brent Beal wrote: 

I suspect that what we do with our individual autonomy will matter more to God than how well we follow directions. For me it comes down to whether or not I believe God wants us to paint by the numbers or to paint our own pictures? As parents, what do we value more from our four-year-olds? A paint-by-the-numbers portrait identical to what’s on the box, or a free-spirited 'Look, Mom, this is you and Dad in a rocket ship with a cow!' masterpiece?

The Purpose of the Book of Mormon

From Mark Brown's "On Re-reading Scripture":

"The title page announces that the purpose of the book is to convince its readers to believe in Jesus Christ. It seems to me that this obvious point nevertheless gets overlooked, even by believing latter-day saints. The book can be understood in many ways, yes, but the more time we spend looking for modern day parallels to the Kingmen, for instance, the more we will miss the message of Christ’s grace and the hope and redemption that he offers.

That is the central message and it is so huge that everything else must be seen as something of a sideshow. Sideshows can be interesting and instructive, but they can also be distracting. The book consistently seeks to persuade us to believe and repent, and we just as consistently want to talk about something else. We cannot blame other Christians for missing the point of the Book of Mormon when we Mormons often seem intent on missing the point, too."

Reading Abraham 3:22-28 through new eyes

Abraham 3:22-28 is a narrative which clearly involves multiple persons. Yet readers often unwittingly place Christ into all roles simultaneously. The following is my attempt to identify and make sense of them all. I especially look at verse 27 differently now:

Verse 22, Abraham as narrator: Now the Lord [Jesus/Jehovah/God the Son] had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;

Verse 23: And God [the Father, or "Head God"] saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: ["]These I will make my rulers["]; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he [the Lord or God?] said unto me: ["]Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born["] [on earth].

Verse 24: [Abraham as narrator] And there stood one [Lord Jesus] among them that was like unto God [God the Father], and he [the one like unto God/Jesus/God the Son] said unto those who were with him: [Jesus as narrator now] ["]We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;

Verse 25: And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God [doesn't matter to me if here he's referring to himself in the future in the third person or the Father, either one works for me] shall command them;

Verse 26: And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever.["]

Verse 27: [Abraham again, briefly, as narrator] And the Lord [Jesus/Jehovah] said: ["]Whom shall I send?["] [to be the first to experience the next estate] And one [Michael/Adam] answered like unto the Son of Man [Jesus, Son of Man or Son of God]: ["]Here am I, send me["]. And another [Lucifer] answered and said: ["]Here am I, send me["]. And the Lord [Jesus] said: ["]I will send the first.["]

Verse 28: And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and, at that day, many followed after him.

This reading seems to be more in line with the fact that God the Father delegates much of the responsibility for the work on this earth to the Son/Jesus, and that Jesus is usually the one giving all the revelations. It's also in line with Hugh Nibley's insight below (particularly the bolded part in the second paragraph):

"Our temple drama began like the book of Job, the Gospel of John, and Goethe's Faust, with the 'Prologue in Heaven.' In the temple today the prologue is spoken offstage, that is, in another world far removed from our present one. We hear the council in heaven discussing the plan to organize a world like other worlds that have been formed. They will 'take of these materials, and . . . will make an earth whereon these may dwell' (Abraham 3:24). The definite pronoun these plainly points to or indicates something, showing that the drama is in progress. Then they appoint two others from among those who stood 'among those that were spirits' (Abraham 3:23). Again the definite pronoun that calls our attention to parties who are not mentioned but are obviously indicated by gesture—these are stage directions.

"Things being thus decided, the Lord said 'Whom should I send?' Here we should note that thirty-three of the forty-two verses in Moses 1 begin with the word and. This in our narrative is the so-called wåw-conversive in Hebrew, which converts the past to a future tense, giving it the sense of stage direction: 'The Lord shall say.' To his question, 'one answered [or one shall answer] like unto the Son of Man,' obviously stepping forward: 'Here I am, send me' (Abraham 3:27). The action is clearly indicated, but why 'one like unto the Son of Man'? Why not simply the Son of Man? Because plainly this is not the real character but an impersonation of him, one taking his part: 'like the Son of Man'" (Abraham's Temple Drama).

This reading also gives new insight to the fact that Michael (whose name in Hebrew means “Who is like God”) serves as a "type" of Christ, or shadow of things to come. And in my opinion, what a significant way to get this mortal drama kicked off!

An Open Canon of Scripture: Gods Words Never Cease

"Some Christians, in large measure because of their genuine love for the Bible, have declared that there can be no more authorized scripture beyond the Bible. In thus pronouncing the canon of revelation closed, our friends in some other faiths shut the door on divine expression that we in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hold dear: the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the ongoing guidance received by God’s anointed prophets and apostles. Imputing no ill will to those who take such a position, nevertheless we respectfully but resolutely reject such an unscriptural characterization of true Christianity."

Elder Holland goes on to say that "the fact of the matter is that virtually every prophet of the Old and New Testament has added scripture to that received by his predecessors. If the Old Testament words of Moses were sufficient, as some could have mistakenly thought them to be, then why, for example, the subsequent prophecies of Isaiah or of Jeremiah, who follows him? To say nothing of Ezekiel and Daniel, of Joel, Amos, and all the rest. If one revelation to one prophet in one moment of time is sufficient for all time, what justifies these many others? What justifies them was made clear by Jehovah Himself when He said to Moses, “My works are without end, and . . . my words . . . never cease."

"One Protestant scholar has inquired tellingly into the erroneous doctrine of a closed canon. He writes: 'On what biblical or historical grounds has the inspiration of God been limited to the written documents that the church now calls its Bible? . . . If the Spirit inspired only the written documents of the first century, does that mean that the same Spirit does not speak today in the church about matters that are of significant concern?” We humbly ask those same questions."

"Continuing revelation does not demean or discredit existing revelation. The Old Testament does not lose its value in our eyes when we are introduced to the New Testament, and the New Testament is only enhanced when we read the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. In considering the additional scripture accepted by Latter-day Saints, we might ask: Were those early Christians who for decades had access only to the primitive Gospel of Mark (generally considered the first of the New Testament Gospels to be written)—were they offended to receive the more detailed accounts set forth later by Matthew and Luke, to say nothing of the unprecedented passages and revelatory emphasis offered later yet by John? Surely they must have rejoiced that ever more convincing evidence of the divinity of Christ kept coming. And so do we rejoice..."

"One other point needs to be made. Since it is clear that there were Christians long before there was a New Testament or even an accumulation of the sayings of Jesus, it cannot therefore be maintained that the Bible is what makes one a Christian. In the words of esteemed New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, “The risen Jesus, at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, does not say, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth is given to the books you are all going to write,’ but [rather] ‘All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me.’ “ In other words, “Scripture itself points . . . away from itself and to the fact that final and true authority belongs to God himself.” So the scriptures are not the ultimate source of knowledge for Latter-day Saints. They are manifestations of the ultimate source. The ultimate source of knowledge and authority for a Latter-day Saint is the living God. The communication of those gifts comes from God as living, vibrant, divine revelation."

-Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, “My Words . . . Never Cease”