Church Or Individual? Who Is Most Accountable For Lack Of Correct Understanding?

[ERayR]

I don't know anybody who did. I'm not sure those people actually exist. Everyone here on this board claims they're one, so I guess I'll have to trust you. I don't know a single person who knew about Oliver's divining rod before the internet age. I suspect if you did a poll in 1995, you would find less than 1 in 1,000 who did.

I expect if you did a poll tomorrow you would find less than 1 in 1,000 who know that. So how is this important? I have ask several times why is this "divining rod" of Olivers such a significant issue for you.

[robuchan]

Some of it could be that some of those 30 or 40 "fact" aren't facts at all.

This was linked to in an active thread. http://dan-christiansen.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html It's from Bushman:

They fall into doubt after going on the Internet and finding shocking information about Joseph Smith based on documents and facts they had never heard before. A surprising number had not known about Joseph Smith’s plural wives. They are set back by differences in the various accounts of the First Vision. They find that Egyptologists do not translate the Abraham manuscripts the way Joseph Smith did, making it appear that the Book of Abraham was a fabrication. When they come across this information in a critical book or read it on one of the innumerable critical Internet sites, they feel as if they had been introduced to a Joseph Smith and a Church history they had never known before.

When I say 30 or 40 facts, I don't mean exactly what he says here, but this is the same flavor of information that I'm talking about. It's not the interpretation of the facts. It's the actual facts. And I am talking about facts that LDS scholars now agree on, not facts that anti-Mormons claim that LDS scholars say are bogus.

[robuchan]

I expect if you did a poll tomorrow you would find less than 1 in 1,000 who know that. So how is this important? I have ask several times why is this "divining rod" of Olivers such a significant issue for you.

It's one of a bunch of facts. I don't want to make this thread about discussing the importance of any one of these facts. Or what the appropriate apologetic response is (I acknowledge there are apologetic counters--and I fully understand the treatments). The issue is that are all these facts about the restoration that went unknown for me until the internet age, even after what I would consider is doing "all I can do" or all I "should" do relative to church gospel study. And no reasonable outline of church study for me during this time period would have resulted in me knowing these facts.

[Libs]

Robuchan, you may have answered this, already, so if you have, forgive me, as I haven't been keeping up on this thread, but would it have made a difference to you, do you think, if you had learned those things in Sunday School or other church setting?

What is your bottom line? Would you like to see a change in church curriculum? Or are you just asking that people understand and not blame you for not knowing these things?.. (which I don't, btw...blame you).

[robuchan]

Robuchan, you may have answered this, already, so if you have, forgive me, as I haven't been keeping up on this thread, but would it have made a difference to you, do you think, if you had learned those things in Sunday School or other church setting?

What is your bottom line? Would you like to see a change in church curriculum? Or are you just asking that people understand and not blame you for not knowing these things?.. (which I don't, btw...blame you).

I'm not going anywhere with this. I have no demands for the church. It can do what it wants. I'm not even sure I think the inoculation theory is a good idea.

I just think it's offensive and inaccurate when LDS defenders tell me it's my own fault I didn't know this list of facts. That I was lazy or inferior somehow. I'd like some acknowledgement from Kevin Christensen and others that use this approach that it is arrogant and wrong of them to say this.

[Tacenda]

I'll chime in here Libs, and give my answer to your question for Robuchan. It would have made a difference to me because then I'd know everyone else was taught it and therefore not feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode. For instance, last week during a primary lesson, I mentioned that JS also looked at a stone in a hat while Emma wrote what he said after reading the words on the stone. The teacher was like "Oh, how cool is that?". She'd never heard it before. This week in class as we reviewed what was learned last week she asked about it again saying she never knew. Now I'm hoping she doesn't run into some anti site on the internet to look it up. Or maybe she'll go to LDS.org and try there, hopefully it IS there. It's stuff like this that tells me it would make a huge difference to everyone to have learned true history from the beginning or as soon as we had truth that is, which is something interesting, when did the church know about the stone in the hat and many other historical facts? For instance did the pioneers know of these things? I'm going to say "no" on JS's polygamy, since he denied it at first and had the printing press destroyed because of it.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Tacenda

[Libs]

I'm not going anywhere with this. I have no demands for the church. It can do what it wants. I'm not even sure I think the inoculation theory is a good idea.

I just think it's offensive and inaccurate when LDS defenders tell me it's my own fault I didn't know this list of facts. That I was lazy or inferior somehow. I'd like some acknowledgement from Kevin Christensen and others that use this approach that it is arrogant and wrong of them to say this.

Okay...thanks. I wasn't real clear about what you were after, on this thread.

People are going to think whatever they think. I wasn't born in the church, but came in rather late in life. I really had no clue about the history of the church (or very little). I had a testimony of the Book of Mormon (a very profound testimony, that I didn't think could be shaken...but, that was a bit arrogant of me.

I knew some basic history, like I knew that Brigham Young had a lot of wives...but, for some reason, I had never heard that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. I don't think that would have even bothered me, except I found out about it, during the whole Warren Jeffs scandal...and people were telling me, Jeffs was just like Joseph Smith. When I found out the ages of some of his "wives", I flipped out and jumped to all kinds of terrible (and in retrospect, probably unfair) conclusions. It really rocked my world, for a long time.

So, was it my fault that I didn't know? Maybe, in part, but I didn't think so, at the time. I thought I was learning all about the history in church (the basics, anyway). What was more my fault, I now believe, was believing so much of the negative, right off the bat, without even researching it. I did try to research, some of it, but it was making me angry, when I found out so much of it was true. I just was not going to justify someone marrying several 14 year olds, in any way shape or form (again with the arrogance...ugh).

So, maybe it wasn't my fault that I didn't know (I don't think it was...and I don't believe it was your fault, either). But, the way I, subsequently, handled the information...was not very thoughtful or "smart"..and really devastating to my testimony, at the time. I am only just fairly recently seeing that. It's like the dust I had kicked up, had to settle, first.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Libs

[Libs]

I'll chime in here Libs, and give my answer to your question for Robuchan. It would have made a difference to me because then I'd know everyone else was taught it and therefore not feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode. For instance, last week during a primary lesson, I mentioned that JS also looked at a stone in a hat while Emma wrote what he said after reading the words on the stone. The teacher was like "Oh, how cool is that?". She'd never heard it before. This week in class as we reviewed what was learned last week she asked about it again saying she never knew. Now I'm hoping she doesn't run into some anti site on the internet to look it up. Or maybe she'll go to LDS.org and try there, hopefully it IS there. It's stuff like this that tells me it would make a huge difference to everyone to have learned true history from the beginning or as soon as we had truth that is, which is something interesting, when did the church know about the stone in the hat and many other historical facts? For instance did the pioneers know of these things? I'm going to say "no" on JS's polygamy, since he denied it at first and had the printing press destroyed because of it.

I think it would be very helpful to include some of the "problem areas" (things that some struggle with) in church classes. Better to hear it there, than from "antis"..

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

So, uh, not to put too fine a point on it, but I just finished my book of the day ...

[ERayR]

What I lost my testimony of is not relevant to the content of this thread. I think the issue in this thread is an important one to isolate on.

You seem to be seeking absolution because you were not given all the information you think you should have been given. You will not be faulted for what you did not know but you will be responsible for what you chose to do with it once you received it.

[volgadon]

Jeremy is spot on. Has anyone seen the links to the Osprey survey I posted in the other thread?

http://news.bbc.co.u...ion/1123738.stm

http://www.telegraph...as-British.html

[juliann]

I only learned those things after the internet age. I don't think you can conceivably create a sample gospel study program that would have lead me to these facts before the internet age. We already hashed out one example in another thread: Oliver's divining rod. Kevin Christensen couldn't produce a source and in fact produced three false sources.

Oh, wow, you are now changing the facts. What you asked for was...

You could continue to insult me or you could explain to me in what books, which Sunday School lessons, or which General Conference talks I could have learned the true historical context of D&C 8 and Oliver's divining rod. If I was so lazy, please map out a course of study I should have taken to learn all these things.

And that is exactly what he gave you. You have since changed what you asked him so you can continue complaining and that is not cool.

I don't think you have picked a very good example. I don't think you can find 1 in 1000 who would be shocked over divining rods to begin with. So just for fun from 2005.... http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_2959255

Utah's long drought may be over but the state's booming economy is now making it easier for landowners to afford the thousands of dollars necessary to drill water wells on their properties. And that means Utah dowsers, such as Jessop, are getting called to survey properties up to a dozen times a month.

While some may question the wisdom of relyingon the twitching of a willow branch or the swing of a piano-wire divining rod to locate a drill site, those who practice the ancient art of "water witching" are as much in demand as ever.

You really should take this to social hall if you only want to talk about how you were wronged and the people who offended you.

[cinepro]

I haven't read the whole thread, but just today in EQ the teacher illustrated a point by referring to how "Sidney Rigdon saw the plates, but later fell away" (meaning, as a witness to the gold plates Sidney had more "evidence" for his testimony but even then he fell away from the Church). Throughout the lesson, several others made reference to Sidney Rigdon having seen the plates. Of course, this was like nails on a chalk board to me, but I didn't want to correct them (Unless the teacher was secretly injecting the Spaulding Theory into the lesson, Sidney Rigdon didn't enter the Mormon scene until after the plates were gone).

So there was an example of an admittedly minor "incorrect" understanding being taught and reinforced in a church class.

[robuchan]

Oh, wow, you are now changing the facts. What you asked for was...

And that is exactly what he gave you. You have since changed what you asked him so you can continue complaining and that is not cool.

I don't think you have picked a very good example. I don't think you can find 1 in 1000 who would be shocked over divining rods to begin with. So just for fun from 2005.... http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_2959255

You really should take this to social hall if you only want to talk about how you were wronged and the people who offended you.

I had already brought up the divining rod aspect of the story a few times in that thread. KC knew exactly what I had requested.

Read the OP again. I outline the issue very clearly. It's an apologetics issue not a Social Hall issue.

[ERayR]

I had already brought up the divining rod aspect of the story a few times in that thread. KC knew exactly what I had requested.

Read the OP again. I outline the issue very clearly. It's an apologetics issue not a Social Hall issue.

You seem to have a real problem with well witchers .

Edited February 11, 2013 by ERayR

[awyatt]

You seem to have a real problem with well witchers .

Actually, he has a real problem with accepting any explanation that contradicts his own experience. Others have said that experience varies widely by locale, and that his experience didn't match theirs. Doesn't matter; the validity of those alternative experiences can't possibly be right.

Also, he has no problem putting words in others' mouths, as KC never said what he says KC said.

-Allen

Edited February 11, 2013 by awyatt

[Calm]

So far, all I've got is "you should have read more", but no one can tell me how I could have known which books to read.

I know that problem. I went to the libraries and would first hit the lds section, grab anything that looked promising...got through those pretty quickly since I didn't live in Utah so the sections tended to be small and generally had a lot of the less educated anti works...which surprised me until I found out how few academically oriented anti works there are out there....so then I'd hit other faiths and would pick ones which look like they were published by decent publishers. A lot of hit and misses over the years. Once I got connected by the Internet, I was able to take advantage of book reviews and would find a book that was interesting to me that way..and of course it opened up articles availability tremendously. But before the Internet pretty much the only way for me to find the right books was to go to bookstores and libraries and read the blurbs on the covers, one could tell pretty quickly what style of book something was, but not always the quality.

[juliann]

I had already brought up the divining rod aspect of the story a few times in that thread. KC knew exactly what I had requested.

That only works when your own words can't be cut and pasted for all to see. It's not that you don't have a point somewhere, it's just that your grudges are getting in the way.

[why me]

I haven't read the whole thread, but just today in EQ the teacher illustrated a point by referring to how "Sidney Rigdon saw the plates, but later fell away" (meaning, as a witness to the gold plates Sidney had more "evidence" for his testimony but even then he fell away from the Church). Throughout the lesson, several others made reference to Sidney Rigdon having seen the plates. Of course, this was like nails on a chalk board to me, but I didn't want to correct them (Unless the teacher was secretly injecting the Spaulding Theory into the lesson, Sidney Rigdon didn't enter the Mormon scene until after the plates were gone).

So there was an example of an admittedly minor "incorrect" understanding being taught and reinforced in a church class.

Of course, you could have said that it was Oliver Cowdery. No harm in that. It was probably a mistake or confusing names.

[why me]

I'll chime in here Libs, and give my answer to your question for Robuchan. It would have made a difference to me because then I'd know everyone else was taught it and therefore not feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode. For instance, last week during a primary lesson, I mentioned that JS also looked at a stone in a hat while Emma wrote what he said after reading the words on the stone. The teacher was like "Oh, how cool is that?". She'd never heard it before. This week in class as we reviewed what was learned last week she asked about it again saying she never knew. Now I'm hoping she doesn't run into some anti site on the internet to look it up. Or maybe she'll go to LDS.org and try there, hopefully it IS there. It's stuff like this that tells me it would make a huge difference to everyone to have learned true history from the beginning or as soon as we had truth that is, which is something interesting, when did the church know about the stone in the hat and many other historical facts? For instance did the pioneers know of these things? I'm going to say "no" on JS's polygamy, since he denied it at first and had the printing press destroyed because of it.

Hello Tacenda!

Please do not believe the antis about the head in the hat theory. It is all here in the Ensign. Please give your friend this copy of the article:

http://www.lds.org/ensign/1993/07/a-treasured-testament?lang=eng&query=translation+process+head+hat

From the article in the Ensign:

The details of this miraculous method of translation are still not fully known. Yet we do have a few precious insights. David Whitmer wrote:

“Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.”

(David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Mo.: n.p., 1887, p. 12.)

I still don't see the secret about the head in the hat. It is not secret. But people do forget.

[Scott Lloyd]

I dislike any paradigm that does not begin with me, myself, and I. As I have reviewed my lengthy life the only person that has been present every time that things have gone wrong, that I have screwed up, or anything negative, is me and no one else. I dislike any tendency to shift blame to another person or entity. If you honestly feel that the Church should be the source of all challenging information then you probably need to reassess the purpose of the Church and the need to appeal to both the lowest common denominator and the highest. The highest because the information you indicate you did not know was there all along. Should the Church discourage the general membership from delving deeply into anti-Mormon literature? You betcha! Without a shred of doubt. The objective is to build faith, to learn faith, to exercise faith. There is nothing that you could learn in any history book that should destroy your faith because nothing that you will learn in any history book, any writings, etc. can deny the facts that the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith and through him restored the Church upon the earth. If you want to argue that Joseph was a man; no contest. I assure you he was a man and that during his entire life it was his goal to emulate the Savior and to follow the Spirit and he failed at times and he succeeded at others.

I gave this post a rep point for merit, but also to balance out the one I mistakenly gave the opening post on this thread.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Scott Lloyd

[bcuzbcuz]

Issue: after dedicating thousands and thousands of hours to gospel study, serving mission, graduating from BYU, etc, I did not learn many of the difficult facts about the restoration until well past my 30's and into the internet age. I believe this is extremely common. I talk to other people I know, and they're all in the same boat. Nobody I've ever met is like what 90% of the faithful here claim: that all these issues were freely discussed and very common and they knew them all along. Most learn to deal with the issues and stay Mormon. For some, like me, it causes them to lose their testimony.

Who is principally accountable for that? I maintain it is "The Church".

Sexual harassment corporate blame comparison

I understand it is very difficult to define "The Church". It is also very difficult to put precise blame on any person or entity of why I never knew many pertinent facts of the restoration. When there is sexual harassment in the workplace, a corporation can be sued if it can be shown that if the company has a hostile working environment. So the corporate officers living in New York City wearing suits and acting very proper and appropriate towards women can be sued because of policies that create a situation where workers on an assembly line in the backwoods of Tennessee are not punished or stopped from making inappropriate sexual advances and jokes at female workers. Even if they are completely unaware of what is happening. Is this right? Yes, I think we can see that it is right. Since that law was introduced, companies started having training and quickly following up on complaints, and work environments have improved dramatically for women.

“Hostile Learning Environment” of the Church in the 80's and 90's

I'm focusing on this time period because that's when I became an adult in the church, and that's the general age category of my peers that so many are being tripped up by this issue. Intellectual analysis of church history and issues became more common and there was a retrenching by the church, to put a stop to it. See September 6, see the language in the TR recommend about “affiliating with other groups”, etc. Arrington was not replaced. General Authorities were inserted as BYU Presidents. There was an environment that it was not good to read anti-Mormon material even just to understand it. There was anti-Sunstone, anti-Dialogue sentiment. There was an understanding that you should be careful which study and readings you should supplement your scripture study with and stick to the mainstream. In my mission the following study materials were approved: scriptures, missionary guide, and a handful of books like Jesus the Christ. When I came home, I was free to read anything, but there was still an understanding that you need to be careful which voices you listen to. The prophets and apostles, Talmage, McConkie, Nibley, Madsen, and some of the rah rah CES types, but don’t go outside of that or you will damage your testimony. The brethren were our models, and the books they quoted in GC were the books that became our study material. The books our religious instructors referred to became our study material. D Michael Quinn was not one of these. He was a bitter apostate we should avoid.

You had many pat answers to anti-Mormon questions or apologetic issues which floated around the church and were just assumed. ie Joseph’s marriages were all spiritual. Masonic temple ceremony matched LDS because they both date to Solomon’s temple. Lamanites were the principal ancestors of Native Americans. Magic in BOM translation and treasure hunting were anti-Mormon lies that you should stay away from investigating. No discussion of polyandry. Thomas Marsh was offended by a milk cow. The fact that First Vision was not emphasized or discussed in the early days of the church. The fact that the Peter, James, John visit was never mentioned or discussed until years later. You have art like the Joseph/Oliver painting that manipulates the understanding of BOM translation. You have poor/incorrect defense of Book of Abraham issues floating around the mainstream. All this I call part of a hostile learning environment. Reading RSR alone will provide at least 30 or 40 gotchas to the average Mormon in my generation that make you think “wow never heard that before! That certainly is different than I had been taught or left to assume.”

How is this the church’s responsibility?

Just like the corporate officers sued for sexual harassment, church leaders are responsible for this environment. Sunday School may not be the place for correct historical analysis. But certainly the manual for a class for college credit at the university level called History of the Church should be the place for it. The church is responsible for threatening scholars that got too close to anything negative. The church is responsible for the anti-Sunstone sentiment. The church is responsible for allowing all the assumptions and mistruths to perpetuate. The church is responsible for the feelings I had that discouraged open analysis and study of these issues from non-approved sources. The church is responsible for the contentment I had, and so many thousands of my peers had, on dozens of obviously false and immature apologetic arguments. (note: I don’t mean to say that all apologetic arguments are false and immature. I would characterize none of the current apologetic arguments as obviously false and immature)

Is the individual accountable? Who bears more accountability the individual or the church?

Are all these good, active, faithful LDS who are surprised by these facts, are they accountable for not knowing the truth earlier? Let’s see what a faithful LDS would need to do in order to understand the RSR type facts and not be surprised when they hear them in the internet age.

1. Since you have no reason to prioritize an LDS scholar’s writing over one of the brethren or a CES/Education Week kind of author, you would literally have to read a book a day to get the coverage required to even get exposure to some of the issues. For every true Mormon Scholar, you’d read 10 or 20 doctrinal/fluff type books published by Deseret Book. Some of the issues (like Oliver’s divining rod) have already been shown that they exist NOWHERE in Mormon mainstream literature available in the 80’s/90’s.

2. Because you have taught to distrust any non-mainstream treatment of LDS issues, even if you had exposure to some of the more accurate apologetic arguments which destroyed the first level false apologetic arguments that were widely accepted in the church, you would have no reason to trust these facts. You would probably go back to mainstream sources or your trusted advisors like father, bishop, seminary/institute instructor to get their advice, and these men are all cut out of the same conservative cloth. It’s called breathing your own exhaust.

3. Outside of this, you would need to have a rebellious/liberal bent to prioritize non-mainstream and to seek out edgy material that you knew was outside what you were counseled to read and study. I don’t think this is reasonable to expect LDS to go against church counsel in order to learn the true facts about Mormonism. Or I would need to have doubts in my testimony. There would need to be something driving me towards unsanctioned sources, like a feeling that there was something wrong with how I was taught. If I have faith in the brethren and a testimony of the gospel, I am satisfied with all the fluffy/incorrect answers. There is no need to challenge them.

This explains the environment I grew up in the church, and I believe so many of my peers did also. The church created an insular environment where certain facts and ideas were suppressed and whitewashed and going to outside sources to study was discouraged. This is why The Church and not the individual is mostly accountable for why so many thousands of people don’t learn important historical details about the church until late in life and after the internet age.

I enjoyed reading your post and the subsequent responses. I'm not sure I have a better response simply because, as someone has pointed out, the church employs only lay personell for church positions and, depending where one lives, answers to questions of doctrine can be either sketchy or brilliant.

The internet is not a comforting companion either, sprinkled equally magicly with wisdom and BS.

When questions arise it would be useful if the church had prepared texts of doctrinal discourse for the inquisitive to explore, but maybe that is wishing for too much. What would be useful for one would probably be detrimental to another.

Most of us were fed baby portions when we first entered the church. And that's natural enough. Unfortunately, like many others, I seldom got beyond the pablum stage in any discourses, either on my mission or when I lived far away from centers of learning with a Mormon bias. I probably wasn't truly weaned until my mid 20's. I didn't choke on the meaty issues, I just put them on back burners to putter and boil down into a palatable stew.

I agree that the church ill prepares it's members for trials of faith. "You're on your own" is a thin gruel and you're supposed to wash it down with prayer and scripture study but with very little intellectual support. I was never angry at the church or its leaders for the lack of straightforward information and history, my wife was furious. We all take it differently.

[bcuzbcuz]

Hello Tacenda!

Please do not believe the antis about the head in the hat theory. It is all here in the Ensign. Please give your friend this copy of the article:

http://www.lds.org/e...rocess head hat

From the article in the Ensign:

The details of this miraculous method of translation are still not fully known. Yet we do have a few precious insights. David Whitmer wrote:

“Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.”

(David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Mo.: n.p., 1887, p. 12.)

I still don't see the secret about the head in the hat. It is not secret. But people do forget.

The questions that arise for me are hat related. How big was the hat? Joseph got his face and seer stone into the hat? That would place the stone very close to his face. The focal point for his view would be somewhat beyond the top of the hat. Try it yourself. Put printed material in front of your face and see where visual accruity ends. Even big text is hard to read closer than 10 cm.

One character at a time, means that the language being interpretted was symbol related, not textual.

Thirdly, if Joseph had his head in the hat, did he keep his head in the hat to read the English Text or did he lift his head out of the hat each time? If he kept his face in the hat, wouldn't his reading of the text be muffled, thereby making interpretation difficult? If he lifted his head out each time to read the text wouldn't the light greeting his eyes make his eyes need time to get used to the darkness in the hat for the next view? All very cumbersome.

But it also means that Joseph wasn't translating the scripts on the golden plates but seeing the texts separately, in his hat. In fact, Cowdery says Joseph saw it as parchment. What is it, golden plates or parchment? What purpose did the golden plates serve? Where did the parchment idea come from? What has Joseph Smith said himself about translating from goldenplates or does he say parchment?

Edited February 11, 2013 by bcuzbcuz

[mathonihah]

Church Or Individual? Who Is Most Accountable For Lack Of Correct Understanding?

Correct understanding of what? Correct understanding of the Restored gospel, Yes; of other things, No.

The mission of the Church is to preach the Restored gospel, the good news of the Restoration, and to warn people to repentance. It is not the Church of Joseph Smith; it is the Church of Jesus Christ. It is the responsibility of anyone who decides to accept that message, and join the Church, to make sure that the message is correct, the Restoration is true, and that he is not being deceived. I don’t care what Joseph Smith was like. If he had problems, that is between him and the Lord. As long as the message is true, that is all I care about.

If anyone is deceived, it is ultimately their own fault, not somebody else’s fault. When I was investigating the Church, I made sure that I was absolutely satisfied in my own mind that the Church was true before joining; because I didn’t want to do something that afterwards I would regret, and look like a fool. Only a fool would do something that afterwards they would regret, when they have the opportunity not to. I had plenty of time to investigate and make sure I was doing the right thing, before taking the final step. And the focus of my investigation was the the truth of the Restoration, not the character of Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith might have been a child murderer for all I care. The central question for me was whether the Book of Mormon was true? Did angels appear to him and reveal to him the plates, and commissioned him to translate it? Did God appear to him, and commission him to make the Restoration? Were the priesthood keys restored through him? Are the revelations of the Doctrine and Covenants true? Did God really speak to him (and to the Church) through those revelations? Is the Church today the same church that he originally organized? Are the priesthood keys, the revelations, the Apostleship etc. still there as he organized it? Those were the questions that mattered to me, and on which my decision to join the Church rested. Once I was satisfied of the answer to those questions beyond reasonable doubt, I decided to join.

I did not investigate the personal character of Joseph Smith because they were not the central questions that I needed answered. If I were to lose my faith or testimony because of some flaw I discovered in the Character of Joseph Smith, it means that I hadn’t investigated the Church correctly. I had been seeking answers to the wrong questions. But that is not true. If the answers to the above questions are correct, then who cares what Joseph Smith was like, or what character flaws he might have had, or even any incorrect doctrines he might have taught. He was human after all, and he could have made mistakes like anybody else. But when he received a revelation which says “Thus saith the Lord,” which he later canonized and became scripture, was that genuine, or was it an imitation, a fake? Those were the questions that I cared about, and wouldn’t join the Church unless I was satisfied that they were true. If it turned out in the end that Joseph Smith was a child murderer who cares, if all the above is true?

It really is possible to know if all the above is true; and once that is known, the rest is irrelevant.

[JeremyOrbe-Smith]

Hat-related inquiries should be directed to Brant Gardner's The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon. (See David T's Amazon review.) Another helpful perspective is Orson Scott Card's Joseph Smith: Reader or Translator?