Mormon Coffee

I talked this past day to Felix, a Mormon who has Apache blood and heritage, about a few things concerning the nature of God. We then we talked about the DNA and Book of Mormon geography issue. The pitch to “Lamanites” that Mormon missionaries once gave is no longer as it was. The Mormon Church is changing its story concerning who the Native Americans are. Felix took a “DNA vs. The Book of the Mormon” DVD. Pray for him as he looks into these issues.

A piece on the USAToday.com website by conservative commentator Michael Medved criticizing the new film September Dawn (scheduled to be released on August 24th), has been getting much approval from the LDS community. Even Fox News chimed in with a very hastily put-together piece agreeing with Medved when he asks, “Why would Hollywood release a controversial feature film about alleged Mormon terrorists of 150 years ago while all but ignoring the dangerous Muslim terrorists of today?” Medved goes on to state, “Why frame an indictment of violent religiosity by focusing on long-ago Mormon leaders rather than contemporary Muslims who perpetrate unspeakable brutalities every day?”

Personally, I don’t see this as a pertinent issue. September Dawn is a Hollywood drama, not a documentary, and the Massacre was a real event that in less than a month will be having its 150th anniversary. The timing is understandable.

Medved showed an incredible amount of naiveté when he said, “Mormons won’t respond with any comparable rage, no matter how badly September Dawn tarnishes the memory of their faith’s founders.” One need only read the comments that followed his article to see how wrong he is. Sadly, in typical fashion, many Mormons who agreed with Medved wanted to make sure people understood that this film is just one more example of bigotry and hatred against the LDS Church. Hoping to add some thoughtful points to the discussion I wrote:

“I normally like Michael Medved’s commentary, but in this case he makes a terrible “either/or” logical fallacy. I too would like Hollywood to deal more with the Islamic terrorist problem we face, but this does not mean I’d like the rest of history to be ignored. Having studied Mormonism as an outsider for over 30 years, I can tell you that much of what we know about the Mountain Meadows Massacre is given to us by the perpetrators. Not even Mormon historians will deny that evidence has been tampered with or expunged. This could be why there is no smoking gun directly implicating Brigham Young.

The word is that a new book about the massacre by LDS historians is going to pin the order to kill the Fancher/Baker party on Isaac Haight, a Mormon stake president from Cedar City. Can we reasonably assume that around 50 devout Mormon men would kill 120 innocent men, women, and children, on the orders of a mere stake president when murder in LDS theology is an unforgivable sin? The idea is ridiculous to those who know how priesthood authority works in the LDS Church. It seems rather obvious that these men felt they would be protected, and the only man able to do that would be Brigham Young. Considering that John D. Lee was the only person to be executed for the crime, I’d say he did a pretty good job. I suggest that people interested in this topic read Will Bagley’s “Blood of the Prophets.”

In what I assume was a response to my main point, “Dr. H” wrote:

“The posts on this article show that there are plenty of people out there that would twist history to justify their hatred against people they disagree with. The new book coming out about the MMM, that clears Brigham Young and implicates Isaac Haight, shows very convincingly how it was that good Mormons, fearful of being wiped out by the US Army, would follow the orders of Haight and commit the atrocity. He was not only a stake president, but their militia commander. Regardless of the fact that everyone involved was Mormon, this was a civil militia affair, not a church doing. What started as a couple of foolish militiamen picking a fight ended as a community resorting to a murder in an ill-advised cover-up effort to prevent further agitation of the government against the Mormons.”

All I can say is “WOW!” Can I then assume that if Dr. H was transported back in time and fully cognizant of the “fearful” situation faced by the folks in southern Utah, that he would have followed Isaac Haight’s command to “do his duty” and put a bullet in the head of an unarmed civilian? Who cares if Haight was the militia commander? These were innocent men, women, and children they attacked and killed, not soldiers! Sidney Johnston’s army was hundreds of miles away, and like the Fancher/Baker party, posed no immediate threat. Besides, Mormons often praise General Alexander Doniphan for refusing a command by a superior officer to kill Joseph Smith. Doniphan argued that to do so would to be to kill him in “cold-blood.” What makes this so different?

I personally have no high hopes for the book coming out by the LDS Church. Like always, it is an in-house job that, like the massacre itself, comes with an oath of secrecy on the part of those involved. No outsiders were allowed to examine the information available to the three Mormon historians involved in the project. That being the case, how can any Mormon automatically assume with absolute certainty that Young was in the clear? Even Dr. H admits to a cover-up that had to obviously include Young and the rest of the LDS leadership. A common trait with people involved in cover-ups is that they lie. LDS Church historian Richard Turley himself admitted at the last Mormon History Association conference that evidence had been tampered with and was missing. How difficult would it have been for Young and others to cover their tracks given the fact that he was the most powerful man in the territory? If Mormons want to clear Brigham Young, then let them be the first to tell their church to open the archives to any and all responsible historians. It may not settle the issue once and for all, but at least it will demonstrate that the LDS Church really has nothing to hide.

I again state my premise: Can we reasonably assume that around 50 devout Mormon men would kill 120 innocent men, women, and children, on the orders of a mere stake president when murder in LDS theology is an unforgivable sin? Mormons reading this blog, I ask you, if you lived during that time, would you do that?

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On August 8th ABC’s Nightline posted a story about the Hill Cumorah Pageant, a Mormon drama enacted each year by LDS Church members for audiences in Palmyra, New York. The sub-title to the Nightline article reads, “In Upstate New York, Mormons Re-enact Their History and Answer Questions About the Scrutinized Faith.”

Journalists Dan Harris and Mary Marsh interviewed several people for their report. One was Latter-day Saint Boyd Tuttle, a cast member. When asked about the current media spotlight trained on the LDS Church due to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign Mr. Tuttle said,

“‘Personally, I think it’s a good thing because I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the church. And just with people, there’s a lot of misinformation … disseminated out there and a lot of people have, I think, very legitimate questions about the church.’”

The Nightline article noted that one of the most common questions people have is about “the Mormon secret temple rituals, which still exist today.” To this Mr. Tuttle replied,

“‘The temple is a very sacred place, and we hold it in special reverence. But we also tell everybody “anyone is welcome to come to the temple if they meet the requirements. …” So it’s not closed to Mormons, or closed to non-Mormons, but it’s closed to just people who are not prepared to enter therein.’”

Here a Mormon was given an opportunity to respond to a legitimate question about the LDS Church; the answer had the stunning potential to reach thousands. Mr. Tuttle bemoaned widespread misunderstandings and misinformation often disseminated about his church, yet his comments about the secret/sacred nature of LDS temples was thoroughly misleading to an uninformed public. He made LDS temple requirements sound similar to admission prerequisites for an institution of higher education — for those with sufficient GPAs (those “prepared” to attend), there will be no discrimination based on age, disability, national origin, race, religion, gender or sexual identity. This was a spurious impression to impart.

Mr. Tuttle said straight-up that the temple is not “closed to non-Mormons.” In truth, the first requirement that must be met for entrance into a dedicated LDS temple is membership in the LDS Church. I’m certain Mr. Tuttle knows this; evidently he didn’t want the general public to know this. In an apparent effort to make the reality of restricted LDS temples more palatable to non-Mormons, he’s resorted to disseminating his own misleading information about Mormonism.

One of the early comments posted to the ABC website by a reader of this story said this:

“Thank you DAN HARRIS, MARY MARSH, and ABC. It’s refreshing to have someone ask us about our religion instead of getting the often misperseption (sic) of others.”

You see what happened here when a Latter-day Saint was asked a sincere and legitimate question about his church. This is why Mormonism Research Ministry encourages people to learn about Mormonism from many sources: members, ex-members, and non-members alike.

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The repentance of conversion is definitive. It is the 180 degrees radical change of heart-attitude and heart-orientation away from lies and deceit toward Jesus Christ and his sure promises. The repentance of sanctification is an ongoing process. The Christian yearns for a deeper, more sincere, more authentic repentance. We want to be more aware of the holiness of God and the heinousness of sin. We want a more passionate worship of God and more ongoing, constant prayers. We want to be men and women of uprightness, purity, and integrity. We want to unswervingly love incredibly difficult people. I know I sure want this.

Allow me to confess a personal sin to help make a point. When I feel overwhelmed by commitments and promises that I haven’t kept, particularly ones that I haven’t kept out of irresponsible time management and less-than-hearty work ethic, I sometimes curse at myself. I’ll be brushing my teeth, going over my day to come or summarizing in my mind what I haven’t accomplished throughout the week, and then from the overflow of my mess of a heart through my mouth I will blurt out a profanity.

And it feels doubly depressing when I then listen to myself having said such a thing, feeling convicted on the one hand for having been less than fully productive, and now feeling convicted by the ugliness of my mouth and the more serious heart-issue behind it. Out of the overflow of the heart comes the words of my mouth. I then have to ask myself: Who am I? What is in that messy, conflicted, swirl of desires I call my heart? Am I characterized by this? Does it define me?

I remember talking to a friend across the country who left the Mormon church and entered into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The change was by no means simple for her, but there were some definite things that one could point to. She had an old identity and a new one. There was the old self apart from Christ and the new self in Christ. There was a new overflow from her heart into her mouth of a confession of Jesus as her personal Lord and savior, as the one who has always been God and the one who had given her eternal life by faith. A lot of the church structure and community (she was still searching for a new local church fellowship) and theology that had once so easily kept her from certain addictions was now gone. She no longer was kept ultra busy in her local ward activities and callings. She no longer had to fear whether or not she was going to be “worthy” to partake of the Lord’s supper or pass a temple recommend interview. Jesus now was her temple recommend, and she was the temple, indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Whether she gave again into her old addictions became more acutely a heart-issue. In one sense it was harder to fight these addictions, because the artificial restraints were gone. But now was the first time to focus on the root of the sin.

The same gospel truths I preach to a person like her are the same gospel-truths I have to preach to myself. The gospel never really gets old.

Aaron, that is your old self. Put on your new self in Christ. You have been raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly realms so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward you (Ephesians 2:6-7). Set your mind on the things above. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1).

Sometimes the post-Mormon Christian lady would call me, feeling depressed over having given into an old addiction. I knew her well enough to know she was not diving head-first into the pool of iniquity. She was in a battle with the self, doing what she didn’t want to do, and not doing what she wanted to do (Romans 7). She was a new creation in Christ. But that didn’t mean things like this wouldn’t happen. Instead of having her question the authenticity of her conversion (something I would have anyone do if they persisted in unrepentant sin) I encouraged her with something far more powerful than a self-help book or a list of rules: I reminded her of her new identity.

That is your old identity. That is your old self. That is in the past. You are now in Christ. He is now your friend and your savior. He is the husband to his bride, the church. He is preparing his bride with a beautiful wedding gown. Be who you already are in Christ. He justified you and redeemed you. You belong to him now. Lean on him. Confess your sins, and he is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse you (1 John 1:9).

A Christian strives for holiness because of the holiness of the one to whom we have been forever sealed. We are obedient not in order to be forgiven, but because we have been forgiven. When we fall into sin, we come back to him with our weak, imperfect, and incomplete repentance. Fellowship is restored. Faith and repentance look away from the weakness and sin and incompleteness of the self to the strength and perfection and completeness of Christ.

Is our sorrow over our sin a perfect and complete sorrow? No. But it is a real ache, a real heart-cry toward God.

Is our faith a valiant and perfectly strong faith? No, but it looks to Christ. Our hearts struggle with sinful doubts, but at the end of the day we know the one whom we trust.

Have we forever abandoned the sin we have repented of? Who knows?! Yeah, maybe we will do it someday again. But that sure isn’t the resolve of our heart. Oh, how we hate sin!

Are we keeping all the commandments? Knowing the holiness of God and the seriousness of the command to love him with absolutely everything in us and the comprehensiveness of purity required we dare not affirm this.

We bear fruit in keeping with repentance (Matthew 3:8). It is a necessary, inevitable overflow. But our fruit—fleshed out obedience—should never be considered a part of repentance itself, especially when defining the kind of repentance which God views as a prerequisite for forgiveness.

When I was born again and united to Christ and adopted by the Father my life permanently changed. There was a marked difference and direction and orientation my life took. One of the most surprising and most significant evidences of this for me was the fact that I found myself, by God’s grace, loving the most difficult people in my life, even my enemies. It was a natural overflow of realizing that I—dirty ol’ sinful me—was taken into the household of Christ and given a seat at the banquet table of the kingdom of God. I was raised and seated with Christ above in the heavenly realms. He who is forgiven much loves much. “But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47).

So when I find myself having uttered such horrible words in the bathroom I feel like I am contradicting who I am and always will be in Christ. When my old self rears its ugly head I want to kill it (cf. Romans 8:12-15). But my weapon is no inner, grand, divine, god-in-embryo center of self-governing power. It is the sure promises of Christ that I believe in with my empty-handed, broken-hearted, desperate, growing but weak faith. My repentance sometimes is just a whimper from the core of my being. My heart often has no tears to gush out in the deepest of remorse. But the humiliation leaves me no room for self-pity or pride. Like a beggar all I can do is show up again at God’s spiritual welfare office for another free check of grace. Or even more fitting, empty my cup of excuses and self-effort and lift it up, asking, “More grace, please?” In the bathroom, whether I am brushing my teeth or shaving, I find myself stopping and closing my eyes, asking again for the bazillionth time to God,

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. (Psalm 51:1-3)

Further Reading

• The LDS Repentance Quiz
• Repentance (MormonWiki.org)
• Miracle of Forgiveness (MormonWiki.org)

Last week Deseret News reported on a new film in the works: “Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons.” Three Latter-day Saints have teamed up to produce this documentary. They hope to present a theatrical release next June to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the LDS Church’s announcement lifting the ban on blacks holding the priesthood. Deseret News reported,

“Before June 1978, the LDS Church had a policy in place that denied the faith’s priesthood to black males. That year, then-church President Spencer W. Kimball announced that he had received a revelation from God lifting the ban, and today the church actively proselytizes to African-Americans. But the history remains a sore spot for many potential converts and some church members.

“Folklore about the reasons for the ban persists in some quarters, and is something the producers — both active Latter-day Saints — are anxious to dispel.

“‘The official answer (from the church) is, “we don’t know why”‘ the ban was in place, [producer Darius] Gray said. ‘And that’s important. It does away with the rationale that Cain killed Abel, or that blacks were less valiant (in a pre-Earth life), or that Noah’s son, Ham, was cursed’ with black skin that marked his descendants as unworthy.

“‘The brethren (top LDS leaders) have disavowed that.’”

Nevertheless, Deseret News reported that according to Mr. Gray, LDS Church leaders have given him permission to publicly “share” his own belief that

“the ban ‘was not imposed by God but was allowed by God’ as a test for Latter-day Saints of all ethnic backgrounds.

“He [Gray] believes it was ‘not a curse but a calling.’

“‘It was a test to see how we would treat one another,’ he said, adding the challenge for all ‘was the same: to maintain the love of the Savior in our hearts for one another. And when that restriction became too much of an impediment for (God’s) work to go forward, there was a revelation.’”

Clearly, this is Mr. Gray’s opinion, not official doctrine. Apparently there is no “official” teaching on why blacks were denied the priesthood. But there are “opinions” which have been expressed by LDS prophets and apostles speaking or writing as Church leaders. One would think the opinions of LDS prophets, seers and revelators might carry a bit more weight than the opinion of an LDS filmmaker. Here are a few “opinions” that may be worthy of consideration.

“Those who were less valiant in pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed upon them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God and his murder of Abel being a black skin … The present status of the negro rests purely and simply on the foundation of pre-existence” (Bruce McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 527, 1966 ed.).

“President Brigham Young … said that Joseph Smith had declared that the Negroes were not neutral in heaven, for all the spirits took sides, but ‘the posterity of Cain are black because he (Cain) committed murder. He killed Abel and God set a mark upon his posterity’” (Joseph Fielding Smith, The Way to Perfection, 105).

“…there is a reason why one man is born black and with other disadvantages, while another is born white with great advantages. The reason is that we once had an estate before we came here, and were obedient; more or less, to the laws that were given us there. Those who were faithful in all things there received greater blessings here, and those who were not faithful received less” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation 1:61).

“When He [God] placed the mark on Cain, He engaged in segregation. When he told Enoch not to preach the gospel to the descendants of Cain who were black, the Lord engaged in segregation. When He cursed the descendants of Cain as to the Priesthood, He engaged in segregation” (Mark E. Peterson, Race Problems–As They Affect the Church, p.15).

“The attitude of the Church with reference to the Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the Priesthood at the present time. The prophets of the Lord have made several statements as to the operation of the principle. President Brigham Young said, ‘Why are so many of the inhabitants of the earth cursed with a skin of blackness? It comes in consequence of their father’s rejecting the power of the Holy Priesthood, and the law of God’” (Official statement of the First Presidency, August 17, 1951, quoted in John Lewis Lund, The Church and the Negro, 89).

“I know of no scriptural basis for denying the Priesthood to Negroes other than one verse in the Book of Abraham (1:26); however, I believe, as you suggest that the real reason dates back to our pre-existent life” (David O. McKay, November 3, 1947, quoted in William E. Berrett, The Church and the Negroid People, 19).

Addendum: The following excerpt from an interview given by Gordon B. Hinckley may also be of interest. This interview originally aired in Australia on November 9, 1997.

David Ransom: Now up until 1978 I understand Blacks were not allowed to be priests in your Church?

Gordon B. Hinckley: That is correct. Although we have Black members of the Church. They felt that they would gain more in this Church than any other with which they were acquainted and they were members of the Church. In 1978 we (the president of the Church) received a revelation under which all worthy men would receive all the blessings of the Church available to them as well as to any others. So across the world now we are teaching the Gospel to Blacks, Whites, everyone else who will listen.

David Ransom: So in retrospect was the Church wrong in that?

Gordon B. Hinckley: No I don’t think it was wrong. It things, various things happened in different periods. There’s a reason for them.

David Ransom: What was the reason for that?

Gordon B. Hinckley: I don’t know what the reason was. But I know that we’ve rectified whatever may have appeared to be wrong at that time.

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