Doctrine and Covenants

Saint Andrew of Snohomish – True Forgiveness

~ Mormon Mouse ~ Leave a comment

The scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contain a well-know verse about forgiveness that I heard many times during my life in the Church. In Doctrine and Covenants Section 64 Verse 10 we read:

“I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.”

This is probably inspired by verses dealing with forgiveness in the New Testament, such as Matthew 6:14-15 and 18:21-22.

I used to accept these scriptures without thinking, but after being exposed to the work of the philosopher Alan Watts, I’ve gained a different, and I think more true and useful perspective on forgiveness, as well as living, loving, and all forms of human behavior really. I’m particularly interested in his application of Gregory Bateson’s concept of the “double-bind” to certain kinds of behavior that we tend to require of ourselves and others.

In his 1966 book, The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Watts wrote “Nothing fails like success – because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradiction: to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force.”

And so, in response to The Church and The New Testament, and as inspired by Alan Watts, I created the following graphic using a photo I purchased from iStock and my original design and words:

The social double-bind game can be phrased in several ways:

The first rule of the game is that it is not a game.

Everyone must play.

You must love us.

You must go on living.

Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role.

Control yourself and be natural.

Try to be sincere.

Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certain kinds. Living, loving, being natural or sincere – all these are spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen “of themselves” like digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone deplores – weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith – in other people, and in oneself – is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.

-Alan Watts, The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

D&C 124 and the Mask of The Lord

~ Mormon Mouse ~ Leave a comment

In Doctrine and Covenants Section 124, verse 144 it reads:

“And a commandment I give unto you, that you should fill all these offices and approve of those names which I have mentioned, or else disapprove of them at my general conference;”

It’s a very curious statement and one I will return to. It appears in the second to last verse in the longest section of Doctrine and Covenants, a section in which The Lord speaks and commands on a wide variety of things, including the following:

  • A calling to proclaim the gospel to every king in the world, the President of the United States, the governors of The United States, and every country in the world.
  • A commandment to the “kings of the earth” to give gold and silver to The Church so it can build a temple.
  • The Lord’s assignment to and endorsement of John C. Bennett (who later was discovered to be a fraud and a serious enemy of The Church).
  • A commandment to build a boarding house called “Nauvoo House” that Joseph Smith and his descendants can live in forever.
  • A commandment to build a new temple in Nauvoo.
  • A teaser about the great, hidden things the Lord wants to reveal in the new temple.
  • A warning that baptisms for the dead will not be acceptable outside of a temple after an unspecified “sufficient time” has been provided to build the temple.
  • An ominous declaration by the Lord in verse 32 that “if you do not these things at the end of the appointment ye shall be rejected as a church, with your dead, saith the Lord your God.”
  • A pardon for failing, due to persecution, to build a temple in Missouri.
  • The Lord’s will that various named individuals (including Joseph Smith) purchase between $50 and $15,000 of stock in Nauvoo House in order to fund its construction.
  • Messages from the Lord to various individuals instructing them in what they should do and promising them blessings for their obedience. Temple building, missionary work, family relocation, elements of a Nauvoo House business plan, and a new translation of The Bible are all mentioned by the Lord.
  • Offices and callings in the priesthood and who should fill them and what they should do.
  • Some particularly important and special counsel, commandments, and blessings for Hyrum Smith, William Law, and Sidney Rigdon, including giving the sealing power and the office of patriarch, prophet, seer, and revelator to Hyrum Smith, and giving the power to heal, cast out devils, and resist poison to William Law. Oh, and the Lord includes an extra, coy little aside for Law in verse 100, saying “And what if I will that he should raise the dead…”

God the Father seems to be the speaker throughout Section 124, due to the last phrase of verse 123, that reads “…which is after the order of mine Only Begotten Son.” However, at times it sounds like Jesus Christ is the speaker, due to references to “the day of my visitation” (verse 10), “Presidency of my Church” (verse 84), and ‘”my everlasting gospel” (verse 88) – all things typically named after or associated with The Son and not The Father. This fluidity with the Divine point of view occurs elsewhere in Doctrine and Covenants, such as in Section 109. verses 1-5 when Joseph Smith addresses God as if he were both Jesus Christ and God the Father, or Section 49 where The Father who speaks of “mine Only Begotten Son in verse 5 also says :”…I am Jesus Christ…” in verse 28.

The number of subjects and level of detail The Lord gets into (right down to the business details of stock purchases) is interesting and worthy of its own analysis and discussion. Some might say it’s a specificity of detail somewhat unbecoming for the Supreme Being, but of course there is precedent, and we find a similar fixation in The Old Testament, where The Holy One of Israel gets very specific about a whole spectrum of special rules pertaining to everything from animal sacrifice to monthly menstruation.

But the biggest curiosity almost seems to be hiding in plain sight from the more casual, or more faith-inclined reader. I myself never really noticed it or thought about it until now. Apart from the impressive list of subjects and details in this section, there is a record-scratch worthy moment in verse 144, the second to last of the section:

“And a commandment I give unto you, that you should fill all these offices and approve of those names which I have mentioned, or else disapprove of them at my general conference;” (emphasis added)

Say whaaat?

Is it just me, or did The Lord God just give a commandment to either approve or disapprove of his own revealed will?

If God gives the name of a person to serve in a specific role in His church, isn’t that a revelation from Him? Wouldn’t that make it his will that that person serve in that role? Or does God just give suggestions sometimes, take ’em or leave ’em? Even if he did, if you knew a name was from God, why in God’s name would you pick someone else?

If I counted correctly, between verses 123 and 142 God “mentions” forty-four names of individuals He wants to serve in specific roles in His church. While it’s very progressive of Him to be so democratic and teach the people to vote on things, wouldn’t commanding The Church to vote on these names in this case be a little like Einstein commanding some children to check his math? It’s almost as if God himself doesn’t know if the names he has given are the right names. And while a good argument could be made as to why The Lord might command His church to vote to approve revelation from Him, I don’t know why God would want His church to disapprove of revelation from Him, unless the revelation may not really be from Him after all, in which case He is not really the speaker in this section of Doctrine and Covenants.

But if God is not really speaking in Section 124 of Doctrine and Covenants, then who is? Well, it’s Joseph Smith, of course, dictating revelation in the first person singular voice as if he himself is God. It’s one of his personas. And it’s rather like the ancient Latin sense of that word, “persona,” which was a mask worn by an actor performing in an open-air theatre, a mask which was constructed in such a way as to amplify the sound of the actor’s voice so he could be better heard by the audience. When Joseph Smith is speaking as God, the mask of The Lord goes up, and often it’s such a convincing performance that one could be forgiven for forgetting that it’s just a mask. But once in a while, Joseph reminds us who is really speaking, by saying something completely out of character for an all-powerful master of the Universe.

In Nothing Doth Man Offend God, Except…

~ Mormon Mouse ~ Leave a comment

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we learn in Doctrine and Covenants 59:21:

“And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments.”

But I wonder…

If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and supremely good, why is he ever offended by mere mortals, who are by contrast so small and weak? Considering the differences in knowledge, power, and goodness between ourselves and God, wouldn’t his offense to our behavior be something like our offense to the behavior of babies? Or ants? Or atoms?

If God is offended by our sins, and he knows about our specific sins long before we do, wouldn’t he start feeling offended when he first finds out about them, so that he can get over it by the time we actually commit them?

And wouldn’t God’s foreknowledge of my sins condemn me to them?

How can I choose not to sin in a moment in which God has already known that I would sin? It seems God must know less than I thought he did, or else he has cemented my sins into existence by knowing all about them before I do.

After all, how can I, mere mortal that I am, contradict the foreknowledge of God?

And what’s so troubling to God about things playing out exactly the way he knew that they would? After all, if he is the expert on everything in the universe, especially his children, I would think it would be impossible for us to offend him. When have you ever come across an expert of any kind who was offended by the very nature of the subject on which they were an expert?

It seems like God, as he has traditionally been known in not only the Mormon church but in the entire Judeo-Christian tradition, is quite the sensitive guy for a Supreme Being. Super-sensitivity is fine with me if he’s getting choked up over a sunset or the end of The Notebook, but maybe it’s not such a good look when he’s micromanaging a person’s feelings, finances, or underwear, or destroying entire civilizations in puritanical disgust.