you are bad – Gospel Doctrine for the Godless

Category: you are bad

BoM Lesson 21 (Nehor and Amlici)

12 June 2016 / Daniel Midgley / 3 Comments

“Alma . . . Did Judge Righteous Judgments”

Mosiah 29; Alma 1–4

LDS manual: here

Reading

With a deep breath, we say adieu to the book of Mosiah, and enter the very long book of Alma.

As for Mosiah, this book ends with this look at the government of the Nephites.

Mosiah 29:6 Now I declare unto you that he to whom the kingdom doth rightly belong has declined, and will not take upon him the kingdom.
29:7 And now if there should be another appointed in his stead, behold I fear there would rise contentions among you. And who knoweth but what my son, to whom the kingdom doth belong, should turn to be angry and draw away a part of this people after him, which would cause wars and contentions among you, which would be the cause of shedding much blood and perverting the way of the Lord, yea, and destroy the souls of many people.
…
29:25 Therefore, choose you by the voice of this people, judges, that ye may be judged according to the laws which have been given you by our fathers, which are correct, and which were given them by the hand of the Lord.
29:26 Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law — to do your business by the voice of the people.

The LDS Gospel Doctrine manual explains.

• What did Mosiah propose to limit the power that could be obtained by wicked individuals or groups? (See Mosiah 29:24–26, 28–29. He proposed that they do all things by the voice of the people, appoint judges and make the judges accountable to the people, and have a system of appeals against judges who did not judge by the law.)

That’s strange: they were allegedly people in ancient America, but here they are operating under a system of government with checks and balances. It’s almost like they’re 19th-century Americans!

Main ideas for this lesson

Nether

In this reading, we meet two ideological enemies of the Nephites: Nehor, and Amlici.

Nehor has some unusual teachings. Then as now, it’s not having unconventional views, but expressing them.

Alma 1:2 And it came to pass that in the first year of the reign of Alma in the judgment-seat, there was a man brought before him to be judged, a man who was large, and was noted for his much strength.
1:3 And he had gone about among the people, preaching to them that which he termed to be the word of God, bearing down against the church; declaring unto the people that every priest and teacher ought to become popular; and they ought not to labor with their hands, but that they ought to be supported by the people.
1:4 And he also testified unto the people that all mankind should be saved at the last day, and that they need not fear nor tremble, but that they might lift up their heads and rejoice; for the Lord had created all men, and had also redeemed all men; and, in the end, all men should have eternal life.

For the writer of the Book of Mormon, it’s a terrible thought that everyone will be saved. Without the losers, how can we have winners? Let’s remember the teachings of the Book of Mormon: that some people will suffer in Hell forever, and that when people don’t get on board, God will be “slow to hear their cries”.

In other words, an all-powerful god will allow people who don’t believe in him to be persecuted and slain in agonising ways, and then punished by him forever… because they refuse to accept his moral superiority.

Alma 1:7 And it came to pass as he was going, to preach to those who believed on his word, he met a man who belonged to the church of God, yea, even one of their teachers; and he began to contend with him sharply, that he might lead away the people of the church; but the man withstood him, admonishing him with the words of God.
1:8 Now the name of the man was Gideon; and it was he who was an instrument in the hands of God in delivering the people of Limhi out of bondage.
1:9 Now, because Gideon withstood him with the words of God he was wroth with Gideon, and drew his sword and began to smite him. Now Gideon being stricken with many years, therefore he was not able to withstand his blows, therefore he was slain by the sword.

Okay, killing someone isn’t good. Nor is defending it.

Alma 1:10 And the man who slew him was taken by the people of the church, and was brought before Alma, to be judged according to the crimes which he had committed.
1:11 And it came to pass that he stood before Alma and pleaded for himself with much boldness.

So he’s condemned to die.

Alma 1:12 But Alma said unto him: Behold, this is the first time that priestcraft has been introduced among this people. And behold, thou art not only guilty of priestcraft, but hast endeavored to enforce it by the sword; and were priestcraft to be enforced among this people it would prove their entire destruction.
1:13 And thou hast shed the blood of a righteous man, yea, a man who has done much good among this people; and were we to spare thee his blood would come upon us for vengeance.
1:14 Therefore thou art condemned to die, according to the law which has been given us by Mosiah, our last king; and it has been acknowledged by this people; therefore this people must abide by the law.

But notice what happens before he’s killed:

Alma 1:15 And it came to pass that they took him; and his name was Nehor; and they carried him upon the top of the hill Manti, and there he was caused, or rather did acknowledge, between the heavens and the earth, that what he had taught to the people was contrary to the word of God; and there he suffered an ignominious death.

The odd thing about this passage is that Nehor is guilty of murder, but when he’s forced to make a confession, they get him to confess about his teachings, not his actions.

This great post by Mithryn also reminds us that, between charging for blessings, giving General Authorities an income, and lucrative book deals with Deseret Book…

Nehor was just a peanut operation compared to the long sullied history of ‘preaching for profit’ that occurs in the LDS church.

Amlici

Here’s the second enemy: Amlici. Probably should be written Amliçi to make the pronunciation less confusing. Not that he’s French or anything.

Alma 2:2 Now this Amlici had, by his cunning, drawn away much people after him; even so much that they began to be very powerful; and they began to endeavor to establish Amlici to be king over the people.
…
2:7 And it came to pass that the voice of the people came against Amlici, that he was not made king over the people.
2:8 Now this did cause much joy in the hearts of those who were against him; but Amlici did stir up those who were in his favor to anger against those who were not in his favor.
2:9 And it came to pass that they gathered themselves together, and did consecrate Amlici to be their king.

They had marked themselves

The followers of Amlici had a way of distinguishing themselves:

Alma 3:4 And the Amlicites were distinguished from the Nephites, for they had marked themselves with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites; nevertheless they had not shorn their heads like unto the Lamanites.

Alma then explains that apostates mark themselves.

Alma 3:14 Thus the word of God is fulfilled, for these are the words which he said to Nephi: Behold, the Lamanites have I cursed, and I will set a mark on them that they and their seed may be separated from thee and thy seed, from this time henceforth and forever, except they repent of their wickedness and turn to me that I may have mercy upon them.
3:15 And again: I will set a mark upon him that mingleth his seed with thy brethren, that they may be cursed also.
3:16 And again: I will set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee and thy seed.
3:17 And again, I say he that departeth from thee shall no more be called thy seed; and I will bless thee, and whomsoever shall be called thy seed, henceforth and forever; and these were the promises of the Lord unto Nephi and to his seed.
3:18 Now the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God when they began to mark themselves in their foreheads; nevertheless they had come out in open rebellion against God; therefore it was expedient that the curse should fall upon them.
3:19 Now I would that ye should see that they brought upon themselves the curse; and even so doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation.

I confess that I found myself thinking of this scripture when I saw (Neon Trees’ singer) Tyler Glenn in the terrific video for his song ‘Trash’. Glenn is a gay man who tried to find his place within the LDS Church, only to find that the church despises him — and in fact contributes to a climate of persecution that places young LGBT people at an elevated risk of suicide. ‘Trash’ is an angry video that sees Glenn lashing out at his faith.

Here’s the video.

Notice how, late in the piece, he draws an ‘X’ across his face, apparently in red lipstick.

You can see why I might have thought: Ooo — Amliçites.

Because it’s not as if Latter-day Saints mark themselves in any ways to identify as members of… wait a minute.

7c0140992d16d9f90cb90d3255a8a11d

ab_mormonundies

14753150
And don’t even get me started on linguistic markers. One of my relatives actually prayed that some food could — say it with me — “nourish and strengthen our bodies.” I almost cracked up during the prayer, and that wouldn’t have gone over well.

Fact is, any social group will have markers that they use to identify each other as members of a social group. This is nothing peculiar to Amliçites, Mormons, gay ex-Mormon singers, or any other social group.

Additional lesson ideas

It’s not you

Times become tough for the church. It seems the rank-and-file members are the problem.

Alma 4:6 And it came to pass in the eighth year of the reign of the judges, that the people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches, and their fine silks, and their fine-twined linen, and because of their many flocks and herds, and their gold and their silver, and all manner of precious things, which they had obtained by their industry; and in all these things were they lifted up in the pride of their eyes, for they began to wear very costly apparel.
4:7 Now this was the cause of much affliction to Alma, yea, and to many of the people whom Alma had consecrated to be teachers, and priests, and elders over the church; yea, many of them were sorely grieved for the wickedness which they saw had begun to be among their people.
4:8 For they saw and beheld with great sorrow that the people of the church began to be lifted up in the pride of their eyes, and to set their hearts upon riches and upon the vain things of the world, that they began to be scornful, one towards another, and they began to persecute those that did not believe according to their own will and pleasure.
4:9 And thus, in this eighth year of the reign of the judges, there began to be great contentions among the people of the church; yea, there were envyings, and strife, and malice, and persecutions, and pride, even to exceed the pride of those who did not belong to the church of God.
4:10 And thus ended the eighth year of the reign of the judges; and the wickedness of the church was a great stumbling-block to those who did not belong to the church; and thus the church began to fail in its progress.

Ask: What function does this scripture have?

Answer: This is a way of blaming members if the church doesn’t grow. People not joining the church? It can’t be because it’s more than a little weird, that Testimony Sundays are squirm-inducing cringe fests, and that the church — at a significant cost — contributes little to the lives of its members that couldn’t be obtained in other ways.

No, it’s because the members are… and then fill in the blank.

When I was in a really bad relationship once, different friends would occasionally tell me something that comforted me immensely. They would say: It’s not you. By which they meant that, even though I wasn’t perfect and needed to work out my problems, I wasn’t the real problem here. They were trying to let me know that the real problem was a frankly abusive situation that I was trying to make work.

Eventually I figured out that they’d been right, and I got out of that relationship.

So the message I’d like to leave in this lesson is this: If you’re having a hard time with the church — if you feel unworthy, if you feel frustrated by the difficulty in getting it all to make sense, if the transcendance you seek seems to be driven out by the endless responsibilities and the mechanical worship — it’s not you.

BoM Lesson 15 (King Benjamin 1)

17 April 2016 / Daniel Midgley / 4 Comments

“Eternally Indebted to Your Heavenly Father”

Mosiah 1–3

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show how the gospel sets up impossible, confusing, and damaging expectations for people

Reading

From all my years of teaching Gospel Doctrine (either here or in church), there’s a principle I’ve learned about prophecy:

It’s crap.

Wait, that wasn’t the principle! The principle is this:

All prophecies either

turn out false (but become plausible if reinterpreted creatively enough)
turn out true, but in ways that anyone could have known at the time
turn out true, because they were written after the thing happened.

All the stuff about Jesus in the Book of Mormon is in the latter category. The Old Testament (contra Jacob) doesn’t mention Jesus at all. It’s so vague about him that the people who knew the scriptures best resisted him the most. But how about the Book of Mormon, which was written after people had heard of Jesus? Suddenly it’s all about teh Jesus! They can’t stop talking about Jesus. How about that?

Mosiah 3:5 For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst men, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases.
3:6 And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of men.
3:7 And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people.
3:8 And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary.

I mean, check that out — the Book of Mormon writers practically had his damn mobile number. They’re calling him by name, they’re calling themselves Christians — and strangely, they’re still living the Law of Moses, so that must have been confusing.

“Why are we sacrificing animals again?”
“Just do it; don’t worry about it.”
“But this won’t matter in a few years.”
“That’s why we’re not writing any details down in the Gold Plates.”

What’s more likely: that Book of Mormon prophets were so amazing that they knew stuff that other Bible prophets didn’t know — or that someone in the 1820s sat down and wrote it?

It’s not just the knowledge of Jesus that marks the Book of Mormon as a 19th century document. It’s the subject matter that the Book of Mormon presents. Check out this odd reference to the status of infants, which preoccupied theologians in the 1800s, and precisely no one in Biblical times:

Mosiah 3:17 And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.
3:18 For behold he judgeth, and his judgment is just; and the infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; but men drink damnation to their own souls except they humble themselves and become as little children, and believe that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent.

Isn’t that kind of a 1830s thing?

When I was at the dear old Brigham Young U, I found that you could read forbidden documents at the library. Well, they weren’t forbidden; you could give your student ID to someone in the Special Documents collection, and while they were sending your details to the Strengthing the Members Committee in Salt Lake, you could read the documents there.

I decided to check out the “Position Papers”, a set of documents generated by the Reorganised Church of JCoLDS when they were making their break from traditional Mormon theology in the 1960s. For some reason, I was interested in Chapter 11, about their reasons from shifting away from the Book of Mormon.

As we examine the Book of Mormon, shorn of any intention solely to amass data in support of preconceived notions about it, we must honestly admit that there arises an awareness of certain problems concerning traditional understandings of the Book. The problems include:
…
3. Its propensity for reflecting in detail the religious concerns of the American frontier. Alexander Campbell in 1832 pointed out that every major theological question of the frontier was covered in the Book of Mormon, including infant baptism, ordination and ministerial authority, the Trinity, regeneration, the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fasting, penance, church government, religious experience, the general resurrection, eternal punishment, and even the burning questions of Freemasonry, republican government and the rights of man.

It certainly did seem to me as though the Book of Mormon did have a preoccupation with issues as they were in the 1800s. It seems that what they say in General Conference is true: the Book of Mormon is “written for our day” — but this is because it was written in our day.

Main ideas for this lesson

Unprofitable servants

King Benjamin is giving his great address to an improbably large crowd.

Mosiah 2:19 And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!
2:20 I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another —
2:21 I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another — I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.

I’m remembering back to my LDS days, and thinking about all the effort the church took. Three hours every Sunday is just a start. For many, there are extra meetings during the week, including ward and stake leadership meetings and Seminary. Then there’s temple attendance. Oh, and cleaning the buildings.

Not to mention going on a two-year mission, and giving 10% of your income for the whole of your life. There’s more, but it all works toward the same point: The LDS Church has a really high bar to be considered basically active.

But even after all of this, what this scripture tells us is that no matter what you do, you’re still unprofitable.

Ask: How does this make someone feel, if they’re trying to do their best in the church?

It’s such a glaring scripture, and I think it calls for some kind of explanation. What is it doing here? What kind of function does this idea serve?

You could argue that it’s designed to motivate people who aren’t doing all they can. But what about people who are knocking themselves out, and get so little in return?

I think it goes beyond the motivational. I see this as an out-clause. Here’s how:

Religion is a con. It makes phoney promises that fail. And when those promises fail, there has to be a way of getting the mark (the person being conned) from blaming the religion. How to divert their disappointment? By setting up impossible conditions for success.

“Oh, you’re not feeling fulfilled? Bad things happening anyway? Well, have you been you coming to church? You have?

“Have you been praying? Oh.

“How about reading the scriptures? Attending the temple? Having Family Home Evening…?

“How’s your home teaching? Aha… home teaching a little spotty? That was probably it. Bring those stats up, and I’ll bet you’ll be in line for some blessings pret…ty soon.”

It’s a fantastic way of explaining away failures — it’s not the church’s fault; it’s yours, you unprofitable servant, you.

And of course there’s the usual benefit: if the church asks for more, it gets more. And the investment fallacy means that members who have given their all will be less likely to question their belief — you must believe it, or you wouldn’t have given so much, right? And if you walk away, you’ll lose everything you’ve invested!

Mosiah 2:22 And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you.
2:23 And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him.
2:24 And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?

Again, the church doesn’t want just some of your time and attention. It claims the right to have it all. Forever and ever.

Mosiah 2:25 And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you.

No matter what you do, you’ll never be worthwhile under this system. You are less than the dust of the earth.

But of course, if you’re running a church, you can’t just heap this kind of abuse on people all the time. That’s why there’s a parallel narrative: I am a child of God. You’re a chosen people, a special generation held in reserve, etc. The church can pull out this story when it needs to, and this makes people feel bonded to the organisation. But if people feel too special, the church can remind them of the “dangers of pride” (which is only really dangerous to the church itself), and it can hit them with the “less than the dust of the earth” story. It can switch between these two stories whenever it needs to.

Seen this way, the church resembles nothing more than an abusive and narcissistic partner, for whom this hot-and-cold tactic is typical (see point 3 on that link). The abuser builds you up if you do what they tell you, but they also remind you that you’ll never be good enough.

Benjamin continues by talking about the “natural man”. Repeat it with me, if you remember it.

Mosiah 3:19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

Ask:

What has the Lord inflicted upon you?
Why does Benjamin think it’s okay for the Lord to “inflict” things upon us?
Why is it important for us to feel helpless like a child in this situation?

Have a read of this commentary from the LDS Lesson Manual:

Elder Bruce R. McConkie said: “After the fall of Adam, man became carnal, sensual, and devilish by nature; he became fallen man. . . . All accountable persons on earth inherit this fallen state, this probationary state, this state in which worldly things seem desirable to the carnal nature. Being in this state, ‘the natural man is an enemy to God,’ until he conforms to the great plan of redemption and is born again to righteousness. (Mosiah 3:19.) Thus all mankind would remain lost and fallen forever were it not for the atonement of our Lord. (Alma 42:4–14.)” (Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. [1966], 267–68).
• How can we “[put] off the natural man”? (See Mosiah 3:19. Discuss answers as shown below.)
a. Yield to “the enticings of the Holy Spirit.” How does this help us “[put] off the natural man”? (See 2 Nephi 32:5; Mosiah 5:2; 3 Nephi 28:11.)

What Benjamin is telling us is that the way you are is wrong, and if you want to be saved, you have to act other than the way you are.

Now I agree that sometimes, I am a bag of slop. Like everyone, I can gravitate to a level that isn’t the best for me. I eat too many Doritos, I can be self-absorbed, and if I want to be my best self, I have to exert some energy and overcome some of my slouchy bad habits.

But there’s a difference between saying, “Sometimes I’m a bit lazy or uncaring, and I need to work on that,” and saying “The way that I am is essentially broken, and I need someone else to make me whole.” The first one points to, and enables, self-improvement. The second one instills a sense of permanent inferiority that offers the church as a solution. It is not a way to build self-reliant people. It’s a way to build broken people.

Why the Gospel is terrible

Now we’ve seen enough of the gospel’s program to understand why the gospel does not work. Just for a reminder, according to the church’s “plan of salvation”, we are here on earth in a kind of probationary state. Our ability to return to God depends on the choices we make here.

But this plan is stacked against us at every turn.

1. We have been created with an inbuilt tendency to sin.

As King Benjamin says, “the natural man is an enemy to God.” God inexplicably made us want to sin.

But God could have made it so that we wouldn’t want to do anything wrong. This wouldn’t have involved a curtailment of our agency. He had to make us some way or another, and it would have been just as simple to make us in a way that didn’t involve a preoccupation with things he doesn’t like. For example, I have never been curious about alcohol or drugs — not that I think those are wrong anymore, but trying those things out has never been a part of my nature. I still have agency; I’m just not interested in them.

It would have been possible for a super-smart God to think of a way to make humans that aren’t interested in sin, without curtailing their agency. Why didn’t he? Why did he make a decision to stack the deck against us?

2. We can’t trust our own moral compass.

Having given us a tendency to want to sin, God also created us with faulty moral intuition. Not only is the “natural man” an enemy to God, but he tells us that we can’t trust the answers we get from our own moral reasoning.

Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

Let’s think through this, because this one thing unhinges the entire contraption.

My ability to return to God relies on me making good choices. But God gave me a brain that provides faulty moral intuitions. If I can’t trust my own ideas of what’s right and wrong, then I have no way of knowing what “good choices” are.

You could say, “That’s the point. You’re not supposed to trust your own moral instincts. You’re supposed to obey God and ‘yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit.'”

But if I can’t trust my own moral compass, then I can’t even be sure if that’s the right thing to do. If God gives us a faulty ethical lens and says “Go to it”, then the whole thing stops right there. How could I even tell the difference between good and bad choices if I can’t trust my own ethical filter? Unless I have a reliable moral compass, the whole task becomes impossible.

3. Satan

On top of all this, God allows a perfectly evil being to tempt us. If I knew of an evil being, I would keep them far away from my kids, but God’s like “Go for it,” which is another way that he’s a terrible parent. To help us, the Holy Spirit gives us signals that are indistinguishable from emotions, impressions, or dyspepsia. (That’s if we don’t offend him, in which case, he buggers off.)

Even prophets get it wrong in this process, so what chance do the rest of us have?

Ask: Could you convict even the worst criminal under this system?

4. Self-esteem sniping

And after all this — a sinful nature, a broken compass, and access to bad influences — our self-efficacy is constantly being undermined and belittled by the gospel itself. We’re reminded that we’re less than the dust of the earth, that we owe God everything, and that there’s nothing we can do to be considered worthy.

Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone: the gospel is a terrible system. It’s a set up. God could have made it any way he wanted, but he chose to put us in a situation with impossible, contradictory, confusing, and demeaning expectations. This contemptible god belittles us, and expects us to praise him in return.

The appropriate response is the same as it should be for any abuser: we must cut him off entirely, and work within a loving and supportive community to build our own lasting self-respect. Our morality isn’t perfect, but we can work to improve it without the petty sniping of a demanding and jealous father figure.

Additional lesson ideas

Every pore?

Now here’s a linguistic curiosity. When Jesus (allegedly) prayed in Gesthemane,

Luke 22:44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Was there really any blood? The wording is “as it were”, which usually signals a turn of phrase, not a fact.

But fast-forward a couple thousand years, and Mormons will tell you that Jesus bled “from every pore”. This wording appears in our reading.

Mosiah 3:7 And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people.

I seem to remember many church talks where the speaker solemnly asserted that if you were in extreme agony, you might bleed from one pore, but Jesus bled from all of them.

I guess there’s a condition where people bleed from their pores, but I got curious as to whether this might be a linguistic artefact. What I mean is that the wording “he bled from every pore” seems to roll off the tongue very easily. Could it be that it was just a phrase that people were accustomed to saying, and Joseph Smith (or whoever) simply wrote the well-known idiom into his book, which Mormons then took as gospel?

If the phrase “bleed * every pore” were in common usage around Smith’s time, this would explain how it worked it way into the Book of Mormon, and why Mormons now think Jesus had a particularly gory night of it in a garden.

In fact, this is exactly what we see if we look up “bleed * every pore” in Google’s Ngram Viewer.

Follow the link at the bottom to ‘bleed at every pore’ from 1768 – 1832, and you’ll find lots of examples, some of which I’ve copied and pasted here. Note that these examples use the idiom ‘bleed at every pore’ even when no actual bleeding is going on, which confirms that this was an idiom that people were accustomed to using in various situations.

1821: And, when they sicken and die, the hearts of their parents bleed at every pore.

1796: still there are circumstances in his situation wHich cause the heart of humanity to bleed at every pore.

1820: Thus this unhappy nation, by a miserable and mistaken policy, is doomed to bleed at every pore

1812: whether we stand by them, or whether we forsake them, those gallant nations will still continue to bleed at every pore.

1815: without reviving the ferocious and appalling doctrine of constructive treason, which once made England bleed at every pore

And that’s how (I suspect) a common expression worked its way into Mormon doctrine. A metaphorical statement graduated into a literal belief.

This is something of a one-off in my experience. We already know that believers re-interpret literal statements as metaphorical ones when they’re deemed implausible. This is the only case I can think of where a belief went the other way.

EDIT: Redditor Elijah_Unabel made a point that was too good not to share: there simply isn’t enough blood in a human body to bleed from every pore.

Yesterday my young son asked me how many pores are in the human body. I wasn’t sure off-hand, but the most common answers on Google are 2 billion or 3 trillion (although 3 trillion pores seems pretty high given that there are 37.2 trillion cells in the entire body). I asked my son why he was interested, and he referred to Jesus bleeding from every pore. From that aspect, we might just include sweat glands, of which there are about 2 million. My son and I then ran the math and came up with the following.

We can assume there are about 90,000 drops are in a gallon (about 20 drops per ml). At the extreme of 3 trillion pores, this gives us over 33 million gallons of blood. That’s going to be a bit messy. If we go with 2 billion pores, we get about 22,000 gallons, still enough to fill a couple backyard swimming pools.

Finally, if we just count sweat glands, we get 22 gallons. Not nearly as impressive as the numbers above. However, the average person only has about 1.5 gallons of blood, so bleeding out 22 gallons is still a pretty impressive trick.

BoM Lesson 8 (Quoting Isaiah 1)

28 February 2016 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“O How Great the Goodness of Our God”

2 Nephi 6–10

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To encourage readers to partake in all that life has to offer

Reading

Oh, no. Are we into the part where they start quoting Isaiah?

2 Nephi 6:4 And now, behold, I would speak unto you concerning things which are, and which are to come; wherefore, I will read you the words of Isaiah.

Aaargh!

And the worst bit: it’s not even the right kind of Isaiah. Remember, Isaiah wasn’t one person, he was three people writing at different times.

Proto-Isaiah, chapters 1–39, writing about the 8th century BCE
Deutero-Isaiah, chapters 40–55, writing about 550–539 BCE
Trito-Isaiah, chapters 56–66, writing about 500-401 BCE

So does the Book of Mormon quote the wrong Isaiah? Yep:

2 Nephi 6:18 And I will feed them that oppress thee, with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood as with sweet wine; and all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Savior and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

Isaiah 49:26 And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

Nephi and Jacob wouldn’t have had access to those writings, as they were written too late. But Joseph Smith (or another author) didn’t know this, and dutifully copied them into the book.

Of course, the real problem goes way beyond Isaiah. In making his explanation of Christianity, Jacob has to pull a lot of text from the New Testament and from sermons and speeches that were going around the Christian community of Joseph Smith’s day. Check out this post by churchistrue for more explanation.

Main ideas for this lesson

Believe or die

First the bad news: God’s going to allow the Jews to get killed because they don’t believe in him.

2 Nephi 6:10 And after they have hardened their hearts and stiffened their necks against the Holy One of Israel, behold the judgments of the Holy One of Israel shall come upon them. And the day cometh that they shall be smitten and afflicted.
6:11 Wherefore, after they are driven to and fro, for thus saith the angel, many shall be afflicted in the flesh, and shall not be suffered to perish, because of the prayers of the faithful; they shall be scattered, and smitten, and hated; nevertheless, the Lord will be merciful unto them, that when they shall come to the knowledge of their Redeemer, they shall be gathered together again to the lands of their inheritance.
…
6:15 And they that believe not in him shall be destroyed, both by fire, and by tempest, and by earthquakes, and by bloodsheds, and by pestilence, and by famine. And they shall know that the Lord is God, the Holy One of Israel.

Blaming Jewish people for their own persecution is so old and tiresome.

That goes for everyone else. If you don’t believe, God will burn you.

2 Nephi 9:16 And assuredly, as the Lord liveth, for the Lord God hath spoken it, and it is his eternal word, which cannot pass away, that they who are righteous shall be righteous still, and they who are filthy shall be filthy still; wherefore, they who are filthy are the devil and his angels; and they shall go away into everlasting fire; prepared for them; and their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end.

But if you do believe, then everything’s great.

2 Nephi 9:18 But, behold, the righteous, the saints of the Holy One of Israel, they who have believed in the Holy One of Israel, they who have endured the crosses of the world, and despised the shame of it, they shall inherit the kingdom of God, which was prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and their joy shall be full forever.
9:19 O the greatness of the mercy of our God, the Holy One of Israel! For he delivereth his saints from that awful monster the devil, and death, and hell, and that lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment.

Which he created.

2 Nephi 9:24 And if they will not repent and believe in his name, and be baptized in his name, and endure to the end, they must be damned; for the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has spoken it.
9:25 Wherefore, he has given a law; and where there is no law given there is no punishment; and where there is no punishment there is no condemnation; and where there is no condemnation the mercies of the Holy One of Israel have claim upon them, because of the atonement; for they are delivered by the power of him.
9:26 For the atonement satisfieth the demands of his justice upon all those who have not the law given to them, that they are delivered from that awful monster, death and hell, and the devil, and the lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment; and they are restored to that God who gave them breath, which is the Holy One of Israel.

Ask: Does this sound like the Mormon view of the afterlife?

Mormon theology downplays the idea of a fiery hell with literal torment. But this would have been news to Nephi / Jacob, who spend many verses detailing the pains of the damned.

The best explanation, I think, is that the Book of Mormon contains Mormonism 1.0, but this would get updated later. Apparently God didn’t have the foresight to get it right the first time.

Being learned

There are parts of Mormonism that are kind of inspiring, as far as learning goes. Latter-day Saints are encouraged to learn “Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass”, and so on. They’re taught about the unity of spiritual and temporal knowledge.

And yet, when it comes to learning, there’s a strict hierarchy, with religious obligation at the top.

2 Nephi 9:28 O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.
9:29 But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.

Knowledge must always be subordinate to faith. But why? Why must the Book of Mormon regard knowledge as subversive to faith?

And the answer: Well, because it is.

The church promotes false teachings about the origin and age of the earth, the history of the world, and the makeup of the people and language of the Americas, to name a few. Knowing the facts about these things evaporates faith, except for someone with a great tolerance for cognitive dissonance who can believe mutually incompatible things.

And so facts must be kept on the leash. Facts must be cherry-picked to support faith, never to challenge it. Such is the nature of faith.

Are the Q15 liars?

Jacob tells us about liars.

2 Nephi 9:34 Wo unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell.

One of the perennial questions in ex-Mo-world is: Do the top church leaders know that the church is not true? Are they, to put it bluntly, liars?

The more charitable view says that they really do believe that they’re special witnesses of Jesus, and they believe the whole thing.

I take the other view. How could they believe that they’re “special witnesses of Jesus” when they know they have the same kind of witness that any believer has?

And why would they say things like Russell Ballard said at a recent Fireside?

“Gone are the days when a student asked an honest question and a teacher responded, ‘Don’t worry about it!’ Gone are the days when a student raised a sincere concern and a teacher bore his or her testimony as a response intended to avoid the issue. Gone are the days when students were protected from people who attacked the Church.”

Those were good times.

And this:

“It was only a generation ago that your young people’s access to information about our history, doctrine and practices was basically limited to materials printed by the church. Few students came in contact with alternative interpretations. Mostly, our young people lived a sheltered life. Our curriculum at that time, though well-meaning, did not prepare students for today – a day, in which students have instant access to virtually everything about the church from every possible point of view.”

This is someone who knows that facts are not amenable to his faith. No wonder they teach that learning should be carefully kept in check. Someone who has the facts on their side has no need to express such “intellectual reserve”.

Someone who knows all of this, and continues to teach his faith, is spreading lies.

I think they know, and they’re having to scramble.

Cake or death, pt 2

Again, we’re presented with a false dichotomy:

2 Nephi 10:23 Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves — to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.
10:24 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved.

Again, it reminds me of the great script: Kissing Hank’s Ass. Do you want a million dollars, or do you want to get the shit kicked out of you? So simple!

And so depressing. God could have set up the system any way he wanted, but he set up a system where you’re not capable of saving yourself. You’re dependent on him. Deviation from his will results in (from these chapters) hellfire. So you’d better resign yourself — sorry! reconcile yourself — to his will, and try to fight your flesh for as long as you live.

Life offers us many more choices than salvation or damnation. Real life offers love, art, learning, food, relationships, and fun. Let’s enjoy all that life offers.

NT Lesson 36 (Romans)

11 October 2015 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“Beloved of God, Called to Be Saints”

Romans

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To explain why Christianity is incoherent and damaging to one’s ability to act.
To encourage readers to concerns themselves with what is real, rather than appearances.

Reading

I’ve acquired a new hobby: debating street evangelists!

And no, not like this:

I’ve decided that every time I see one, I’m going to engage (if I have the time, of course). I’ve talked to all sorts of Christians, but mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses — they’ve set up a display in the city district. The exact denomination doesn’t matter; I haven’t found that much difference between them.

The discussions tend to take a predictable rhythm:

I ask why Jesus was necessary, and why God couldn’t just forgive everybody
They explain that Adam didn’t obey God, so God decided to kill him and everybody
You can’t do anything to remedy this situation yourself
Killing Jesus was the solution that God decided to use to fix the situation
We need to obey God so he doesn’t kill us in the run-up to his son’s return

It should be easy at this point to conclude that God is a raging psychopath who should be locked up, but for some reason they’re just not capable of making that jump. Maybe I’m just not explaining it well enough. I don’t know.

So when I saw this lesson, I got kind of excited because it contains some of these elements that religious folks are trying to explain to me. Here it is — Paul lays the groundwork for this emerging religion.

Main ideas for this lesson

Unbelievers are evil

Like all conspiracy theorists, Paul really hates people who don’t believe his way. And so does God — he’s going to unleash the wrath annnnnnytime soon.

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
1:19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; that they are without excuse:
1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
1:23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

I don’t know what Paul’s talking about. I do think I’m pretty smart, but I’ve never changed the glory of God into a bird. Maybe Paul thought that was becoming a problem at some point.

Romans 1:24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

He’s going off on lesbians? That’s a first. Even in the Old Testament, they killed gay guys, but they never said a word about lesbians. It’s like there’s been some tacit agreement throughout the ages — dudes with dudes: ick; but girls on girls: kinda hot. There’s never been anyone in the Bible homophobic enough to have a go at lesbians, but now there is, and it’s Paul.

Behold the face of evil.

Romans 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

What the fuck is “the natural use of the woman”?

Romans 1:28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
1:29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
1:30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
1:31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

Oh, Paul. It’s just impossible for him to stop slandering unbelievers.

Ask: When you stopped believing, did you become any of the following:

filled with all unrighteousness?
an inventor of evil things?
full of murder?
gay?

Or did you stay pretty much as you were, but just believed fewer stupid things and started drinking coffee?

What a slanderous litany to tack onto non-believers. For shame, Paul. If he’d stopped and looked around, he’d find that unbelievers live normal ethical lives. This has been found experimentally.

Religion Doesn’t Make People More Moral, Study Finds

Wisneski and his fellow researchers found that religious and nonreligious people commit similar numbers of moral acts. The same was found to be true for people on both ends of the political spectrum. And regardless of their political or religious leanings, participants were all found to be more likely to report committing, or being the target of, a moral act rather than an immoral act. They were also much more likely to report having heard about immoral acts rather than moral acts.

However, there were some differences in how people in different groups responded emotionally to so-called “moral phenomena,” Wisneski said. For example, religious people reported experiencing more intense self-conscious emotions — such as guilt, embarrassment, and disgust — after committing an immoral act than did nonreligious people. Religious people also reported experiencing a greater sense of pride and gratefulness after committing moral deeds than their nonreligious counterparts.

Everyone is bad.

Having established that non-believers are the worst, Paul now walks it back a bit, and explains how it’s not just the unbelievers. Actually, everyone is evil.

Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
3:13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
3:14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
3:15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:
3:16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:
3:17 And the way of peace have they not known:
3:18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
…
3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God

Ask: Why does Paul need to teach that nobody is righteous? Why does he have to make unbelief sound so comically terrible?
Answer: In sales, you have to sell the disease before you can sell the cure. Essentially, Paul is selling the disease.

Romans 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.7:20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

You know, I actually get this passage. I sometimes feel frustrated with the mismatch between what I want to do and what I do. Shoot, anyone gets this who’s ever had a lot of work to do, and ended up watching YouTube videos instead.

Let’s be honest: we all have imperfections and flaws, things we’d rather have done differently and values we fail to follow through on. That’s part of the human condition. But Paul is playing on this to drum up sales, and even worse than that, offering Jesus as an easy fix. How dishonest. What an evasion of our responsibility for self-improvement. Harping on someone’s brokenness doesn’t help to build a self-reliant person. What’s needed is action, not just belief.

It’s because of Adam

So how did we get to be in this sinful situation?

In a word, Adam.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
5:15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
5:16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
5:17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
5:18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
5:19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

One guy did something, another guy undid something — so what? Where are we in all of this? We’re just pawns in some cosmic game. If you believe in Christianity, you must believe that we have a “sinful” tendency we can’t prevent, caused by a guy whose actions we’re not responsible for, and the remedy is some other guy whose help we didn’t ask for.

And it’s a creepy remedy too.

Romans 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

Christianity really is a death cult, isn’t it?

Faith, not works

One of the most confusing and contradictory things about Christianity that I ever tried to get my head around was the role of faith and the role of works. For a long time, I thought I wasn’t smart enough or studying carefully enough. Now I realise that it wasn’t me; it’s Christianity. It’s incoherent. I’ve run across so many people who think it’s crystal-clear (in the direction of their doctrine, of course), but it’s just a mess. Thank goodness I don’t have to think about that stuff anymore.

Here’s a scripture that people used to throw at me as an LDS missionary. It quickly became my least favourite scripture.

Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

And then I would have to construct a complicated Mormon apologetic (big shoutout to the book of James) to explain why we actually need to do all the stupid time-wasting things Mormons do. It’s really hard to criticise a religion from the standpoint of another religion!

Of course, now that I’m coming from the standpoint of no religion, it’s easy. I just say: Paul, what rubbish you talk.

Paul really changed the game, you know. By changing the currency from “what you do” to “what you believe”, he constructed this situation:

God punishes even good people for unbelief.
No one can be saved by anything they do.
We’re all helpless.
Only this external being can rescue us.

This is a setup.

Mr Deity, as always, has spotted the problems with punishing people for misbelief.

And not only does Paul make “what you say” a criterion for belief, he also includes “what you say”. Anything but “what you do”.

I saw the effects of this a few times on the misson. One good Born-Again™ Christian man told me that he was forbidden to help (for example) someone move house.

“You don’t mean that you’re not allowed,” I said. “You just mean that it won’t save you.”

“No,” he corrected me. “We’re not supposed to do it. Unless the pastor gives the okay. Because that would be works.”

I was incredulous, but looking back I have to admit that he was taking Paul’s ideology to its natural conclusion.

And when what you think and say trumps what you do, you have the beginnings of a religion that’s very concerned with appearances — especially when it’s a small conversion-focused religion concerned about its image.

These verses hint at Paul’s concern with the semblances of things.

Romans 14:14 I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
14:15 But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.
…
14:20 For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.
14:21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

In other words, if there’s some food that’s considered to be unclean, Paul says it’s no big deal, go ahead and eat it — UNLESS someone else sees you eating it, gets the wrong idea, and refuses to join the church or something.

The phrase my father (and, I gather, everyone else’s father) used to say was: Avoid even the appearance of evil. You should have heard the ear-bashing I got when I brought home some candy cigarettes. (And he was right; those things are evil.) But my LDS friend’s dad — a bishop — was even more concerned about appearances. He’d chastise my friend if he had the end of a white pen near his mouth while he was writing!

And it’s this concern with appearances that lends Mormonism its puritanical flair. How much better it would be if they could see things as they are, and not be so concerned with appearances.

I think this may tie into Christians’ ability to deny science and reason, as well. If how things seem is important — well, you can control how things seem to you. Things can seem any which way with faith. That’s easy. It’s not as easy to control facts.

Not ashamed

I hope I’ve made the case that Christianity is nonsensical and wrong — even if I’m not able to make that case to the street evangelists I talk to. It’s a form of belief that is silly and damaging. It is so foolish that people ought to feel foolish for believing it. And yet there they stand, day after day, in the pedestrian malls of my city and many others, trying to promote what every normal person knows is a fairy story. What an embarrassing thing to do! How do they not feel completely stupid?

Paul has the answer in Romans.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

He’s teaching people to say “I am not ashamed”, as a way of countering the embarrassment they doubtless feel. It is nice to know that this was an issue even in the primitive church, and it gives us some idea about how the early Christians were regarded among their more sophisticated peers.

But here’s the rub: If you teach that we are helpless before a god who created us, and you want to worship this monster, and you want to do it by believing things that are manifestly untrue, then you should be ashamed. End of story. You need to do better.

Additional lesson ideas

Christianity’s weird relationship with Jews

Paul dropped a few other things into Romans. Looking back on our lessons, we can see a real tension between John — who’s always bashing on about the “fear of the Jews” — and Paul, who talks smack about their unbelief, but also talks about how they’ll absorb Christianity one day.

Romans 11:26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
11:27 For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.
11:28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes.

Maybe Paul’s view was influenced by his double nature as a Christian Jew. But verses like this have laid the groundwork for a very strange alliance between Christian evangelicals (who are longing for Jews to return to Israel so the end can come) and conservative Jews (who are willing to look past the Christians’ conversion efforts if it means they have hawkish allies on Israel).

Check out this edition of “All In” with Chris Hayes to get a view of how this relationship is working out.

Or for a long read, try “On the Road to Armageddon“.

Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible’s prophetic passages, especially those in Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. They make up about one-third of America’s 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century, dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel’s best friends-an alliance that has made a serious geopolitical difference.

Christianity’s weird relationship with secular government

Should Christians obey the law, or not? We’ve seen some high-profile cases lately where Christians have claimed that their belief trumps the law — and they can cite Peter in their defence.

Acts 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

But now here’s Paul, claiming that secular authority should always be obeyed.

Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
13:3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

So what is it? Is Peter wrong, or Paul?

I think this is another case where the Bible is doctrinally incoherent. This allows Christians to play both sides of the fence, and pick and choose the rules they want to obey.

Overcome evil with good

Let’s finish with some good advice.

Romans 12:20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
12:21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

A bit passive-aggressive there, Paul. “Let’s be nice to them; that’ll really piss ’em off!” But I’m not going to tell Paul off for it. Around here, we care about what you do.

NT Lesson 25 (Gethsemane)

4 July 2015 / Daniel Midgley / 4 Comments

“Not My Will, But Thine, Be Done”

Matthew 26:36–46; Mark 14:32–42; Luke 22:39–46

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To explain that the concept of the Atonement makes no sense and is immoral.

Reading

Jesus is about to be captured, so he heads to the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples. They fall asleep, but Jesus can’t bear to wake them because they’re so cute when they’re sleeping like that! But it’s Atonement time, so Jesus knows it’s time to…

Apparently, in a way that’s so amazing that we humans can’t possibly understand it, Jesus suffered for a while, and this meant that everyone’s sin was paid for. It was an infinite atonement and an infinite sacrifice; it stretched forward and backwards in time to pay for all the sins of — not just every human who ever lived or will live — but it also paid for the sins of everyone on all the planets in all the solar systems in all the galaxies in the universe.

It sounds like the whole process took about an hour.

Main ideas for this lesson

Jesus tries to pike out

Jesus falls on his face and prays, asking if the whole torture-and-death thing is really necessary.

Matthew 26:39 And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

This one’s for all the trinitarians.

Actually, Jesus’ question was a pretty good one. Why was Jesus’ torture and death necessary?

Let’s take that up in a minute. But first, blood.

Blood from every pore?

There’s a rather ambiguous simile here in Luke. Sweat, or blood?

Luke 22:44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Mormons have taken the blood idea and run with it. In particular, the D&C takes the “blood from every pore” idea very seriously.

D&C 19:18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

Well, this verse seems to have been a later addition. It doesn’t appear in early versions of Luke. Kyroot explains the implications in reason 171.

These verses do not appear in the oldest manuscripts of Luke and are clearly a later addition. This presents two problems. First, it is another example of tampering with the scriptures, one that was detected only because it occurred later than the dates of the earliest manuscripts. Keep in mind that there is a sizable time gap between the original manuscripts and the oldest ones that have been recovered, so many other examples of scripture tampering may exist but cannot be identified at this time.

Second, it presents an unlikely scenario, for if Jesus was fully divine, he would have known all that was about to happen, would be prepared for it, and would therefore not be in a mental state of agony requiring assistance from an angel.

Problems with the Atonement

The story of Jesus having to suffer and die so everyone could be forgiven of sins has been around for a long time. We’ve all heard about it so often that we hardly think about it.

Once you do think about it, however, the incoherence becomes obvious. And there are so many ways that this story fails to hold together that I’ve made a rather long list.

There are other lists out there — a similar one is at Patheos — but here’s mine.

The suffering was unnecessary

Why didn’t God just forgive everyone? He could have.

The idea comes up in this early episode of Mr Deity:

Instead, he decided to have his son tortured and murdered so he could feel okay about having a relationship with us again. Isn’t that a bit strange?

There have been some attempts to answer this, and the responses center around God’s fairness and sense of justice. Simply forgiving everyone would have short-circuited God’s sense of justice — and yet, strangely, punishing some other guy and then forgiving everyone was totes okay.

These responses can be dealt with very simply. Just keep asking this question: Was it possible for God to find a way to forgive everyone in a way that

didn’t violate God’s sense of justice?
didn’t upset God’s sense of equilibrium?
didn’t involve Jesus’ torture and death?

If so, why didn’t he? And if not, then he’s not all-powerful.

Another line of explanation says that God had to have Jesus tortured and killed because doing so fulfilled some greater “principle”, and this principle could not have been fulfilled in any other way.
If that’s the case, then why worship God? Again, he’s not all powerful, since there are principles that are more all-mighty than he is. Why not just worship the “principles”, since God is clearly subordinate to them?

The nature of the “debt” is never explained

What exactly is this debt? People keep describing this in terms of “Jesus paying the debt for sin” or “paying the price for sin”.

From the LDS manual:

Elder Marion G. Romney: He paid the debt for your personal sins and for the personal sins of every living soul that ever dwelt upon the earth or that ever will dwell in mortality upon the earth.

And so it’s very common for Mormons to use a monetary metaphor. Here’s the one suggested by the LDS manual.

Boyd Packer’s story: “The Mediator”
Elder Boyd K. Packer used a parable to teach about how the Atonement of Jesus Christ frees us from sin as we repent and obey the commandments. You may want to share this parable to help class members understand the need for the Atonement.

A bit of background: The late Boyd Packer was the church’s foremost homophobe. He inveighed against threats to the church, notably feminists, homosexuals, and “so-called scholars or intellectuals”. He was in church leadership for 50 years, and during that time fostered the kind of anti-gay climate that doubtless led to the suicides of numerous LGBT Mormon kids. He decried “Satan and his substitute counterfeits for marriage”, and denied that homosexuality was preset, saying, “Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember, he is our father.”

Upon his death, the world instantly became a better place.

Anyway, if somehow you’re unfamiliar with the “mediator” analogy, here’s the video.

Or you don’t like being bored and lied to, here’s the short version.

Person A incurs a debt to Person B, and can’t repay it.
Person B threatens to throw person A into prison.
Person C steps in, pays the debt, and allows Person A to repay on more manageable terms.

Ask: In this metaphor, who are Persons A, B, and C?
Answer: A and C are a snap. Person A is all of us, and Person C is Jesus.

But what often gets glossed over is the identity of Person B. Who is it?

It can’t reasonably be anyone other than God. So now we have a situation where God wants to throw you in prison, and Jesus intervenes. But Jesus and God are supposed to be on the same side. Instead, they’re playing good cop / bad cop. Why the games? This situation, which we all seem to have been railroaded into at birth, is a set-up.

Ransom

Jesus’ sacrifice is described as a “ransom”. From Joseph Smith, via President Newsroom:

The glorious news, the glad tidings is that Christ our Lord has come to earth, offered Himself as a ransom from sin and made available deliverance from death and hell.

A ransom to whom? Who is demanding this sacrifice? Again, if God is in control here and set up this system, as believers claim, then God is in the role of a kidnapper. I don’t want to worship a kidnapper.

And another similar point: when you pay a ransom, you don’t get the money back. The kidnapper keeps it. Kyroot again (point 63):

The central concept of Christianity is that Jesus died on the cross as a final sacrifice to allow his followers to receive it vicariously and thus be washed of sin for entry into heaven.

But whereas a sacrifice means losing something permanently, Jesus lost nothing. He came back three days later good as new. So, in effect, there was no sacrifice.

The foreknowledge of Jesus is another problem. There he was, telling everyone how his body would be destroyed, and he would rise again in three days. If he knew that he was going to suffer for a few hours, be dead for a weekend, and then become a god and sit at the right hand of the father for eternity, then the whole proposition begins to look less like a sacrifice and more of a career move.

Many people suffer intense pain for a lot longer than Jesus reportedly did. Pseople with cancer or AIDS suffer for months and months; Jesus just had a rough couple of days.

Nothing more should be required

If God demanded a sacrifice and got it, then why should anything more be required of me, like belief or obedience? God’s got the sacrifice he wanted, and we’re done.

When I pay off a debt (say, a mortgage), then my obligation to the bank is over when the money is paid, and there’s nothing more for me to do. The bank doesn’t demand that I “believe” in it or “accept” it into my heart.

In short, the sin-debt metaphor maks no sense. It makes me wonder if people who use this metaphor even understand the idea of ‘money’.

We “can’t understand”

When I point out these inconsistencies, believers respond that the workings of this are somehow “incomprehensible”. They respond that we can’t “understand” it.

Elder James E. Talmage taught: “Christ’s agony in the garden is unfathomable by the finite mind, both as to intensity and cause. . . . He struggled and groaned under a burden such as no other being who has lived on earth might even conceive as possible. It was not physical pain, nor mental anguish alone, that caused him to suffer such torture as to produce an extrusion of blood from every pore; but a spiritual agony of soul such as only God was capable of experiencing. . . . In that hour of anguish Christ met and overcame all the horrors that Satan, ‘the prince of this world,’ could inflict. . . . In some manner, actual and terribly real though to man incomprehensible, the Savior took upon Himself the burden of the sins of mankind from Adam to the end of the world” ( Jesus the Christ, 3rd ed. [1916], 613).

Now this is not quite right. This is the central tenet of Christianity, so if any element of Christian doctrine should be well-understood, this should be it. Yet even professional Christianity explainers can’t explain it satisfactorily, often kicking the can down the road and saying that we’ll understand it “someday”.

If it can’t be understood, fine. It can’t be understood. So don’t keep telling it to others like you do understand it.

These are the kinds of things that believers never seem to think through. It makes no sense, but they don’t seem to notice.

Vicarious suffering for sin is immoral

Sacrificing oneself for someone else is a very common theme in literature. It shows up in everything from A Tale of Two Cities to Frozen.

That’s one thing. But in Christianity, this idea of making an innocent scapegoat pay for the consequences of your actions is a massive evasion of responsibility.

What must go through a believer’s mind? “I can avoid the consequences of my actions by having some innocent guy get tortured? Sign me up!”

As Christopher Hitchens said:

I’ll take your place on the scaffold, but I can’t take away your responsibilities. I can’t forgive what you did, I can’t say you didn’t do it, I can’t make you washed clean. The name for that in primitive middle eastern society was “scapegoating.” You pile the sins of the tribe on a goat, you drive that goat into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. And you think you’ve taken away the sins of the tribe. This is a positively immoral doctrine that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility on which all ethics and all morality must depend.

For that matter, when in the world has human sacrifice ever been a solution for anything? Hitchens again:

You said in a debate with Richard Dawkins, I have it down, you said that the great thing about God is He knows what it’s like to lose a son. Now I want you ladies and gentlemen to ponder that expression for just a moment. First, it’s self-evidently—if the story is true, which I don’t think it is—it’s self-evidently not the case, even in the narrative. He doesn’t lose a son, He lends one. He doesn’t offer one because no one’s demanded it. There’s no problem that has so far been identified in the human species that demands a human sacrifice. For what problem, for what ill is this a cure? There’s no argument, there’s no evidence that there is. No, it’s imposed upon you. I’m doing this because the prophets said I would and I’m going to have the boy tortured to death in public to fulfill ancient screeds of Bronze Age Judaism. But wait, I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I don’t feel better for it. I feel very uneasy about it. Well that’s a pity, because then you’re going to be cast into eternal fire. This is no way to talk. I don’t like to be addressed in that tone of voice.

The idea of the Atonement — putting our sins onto a scapegoat — makes absolutely no sense, even on its own terms. The story doesn’t hold together on any level. It does, however, make a lot of sense in terms of cultural evolution. For someone who’s in a culture that accepts the idea of animal sacrifice, the sacrifice of God’s son would be a natural extension of the idea.

Thankfully, we do not live in such a culture. I do not accept that human sacrifice is moral, and I don’t accept that I must become complicit in the torture and death of an innocent person to become cleansed of my imperfections.

NT Lesson 18 (Lost)

17 May 2015 / Daniel Midgley / 3 Comments

“He Was Lost, and Is Found”

Luke 15; 17

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show how Christianity demeans people who believe differently as “lost”, and how it demeans its own members as “unprofitable”.

Reading

For this lesson, Jesus has a few parables about how to treat those who are “lost”.

Right off the bat, I have a problem. As an ex-Mormon and ex-Christian, I don’t think of myself as lost, and I find it insulting that Christians learn to portray me that way. I could think of Christians as “lost” — what else am I to call someone who ignores and denies the good in this life because they’re busy working for the next — but I don’t really think that. I think we’re all doing the best we can with the knowledge we have. Isn’t that a more respectful way of working through our differences?

Anyway, what advice does Jesus give on how to treat the “lost”? According to these parables:

Parable of the lost coin
Parable of the lost sheep
Parable of the prodigal son

we’re supposed to be happy for them… when they come back to church. But that’s about it. Until they do, Jesus doesn’t have too many ideas. Could this be why Mormons are usually so bad at relating to former members?

Main ideas for this lesson

Lost sheep

Let’s start with the Parable of the Lost Sheep.

Luke 15:4 What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?15:5 And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
15:6 And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.
15:7 I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

Ask: Why would members esteem one person who comes back over ninety-nine who never leave in the first place?
Answer: When someone leaves, it places members in an awkward situation. They either have to think that the person was wrong to leave, or perhaps — gasp — acknowledge that they had a point. But if that person comes back, the conflict is resolved. Of course that person was wrong to leave — by coming back, they’ve admitted it themsleves! It must be tremendously validating when someone returns.

The LDS lesson manual continues this theme.

• In what ways might a person be “lost”? What is our responsibility toward those who are lost? (See Luke 15:4–5, 8; Alma 31:34–35.)

Possible answer: Someone might be lost when they masturbate to porn, and our responsibility is to rat them out to the bishop! That’s according to the LDS video “Wounded on the Battlefield”, here hilariously sent up by Dusty. (Language warning, of course.)

Ask: What do we call a religion in which members monitor and report each other for trivial infractions?

Children

This next part concerns child abuse. It’s not something I’ve been through, but many people have, and worse, the abuse has happened in a religious setting. I’m going to try to be as sensitive as I can about this, but please be aware if this is a triggering issue for you, and I’d appreciate seeing your thoughts in comments.

Jesus speaks of offenses against children, saying that they’re inevitable. He’s only an omnipotent being — what can you do?

Luke 17:1 Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!
17:2 It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.

Nice try, Jesus, but these are just words, not deeds.

Ask: If you were an all-powerful being, and you saw that this was happening to a child, what would you do?
Possible answers: Drop the offender with a non-suspicious heart attack, cause amnesia, change the offender’s mind like God did to Pharaoh.

Ask: What does God do instead?
Answer: Sits and watches, and threatens the offender with punishment later.

Tracie Harris from the Atheist Experience expressed it rather tersely:

When I bring this up to believers, their answer usually revolves around agency. It’s regrettable that this happens, says the believer, but God refuses to abridge the agency of the offender.

My question then becomes: What about the child’s agency? What about their agency not to be abused? Why is the offender’s agency the only one’s that gets respected here?

If this isn’t good evidence that no god exists, then it’s definitely good evidence that this god isn’t worth worshipping.

While I’m on this topic, could I put a word in about bishop’s interviews. LDS bishops — generally men from the community with no training in counselling — routinely interview adolescents in closed-door sessions, in which the young people are quizzed about their sexual behaviour, including masturbation. This needs to end.

We could also argue that religion itself is a form of child abuse. Taking the mind of a child, and diverting it toward supernaturalism is a terrible path that can take years to undo. That’s not to equate sexual abuse and spiritual or intellectual abuse — given the choice, I’d take the spiritual / intellectual abuse I got, instead of the sexual abuse I didn’t get. But it’s worth pointing out that there are different forms of abuse, and even the non-sexual kinds can be damaging.

Unprofitable servants

So it appears that Jesus has no trouble disparaging people who believe differently as “lost”. But he also doesn’t have very much encouragement for those who do believe.

Luke 17:7 But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat?
17:8 And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?
17:9 Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not.
17:10 So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.

In other words, don’t think you’re good just because you did what you were commanded. You’re still unprofitable.

This idea has a function. After all, we want people in church to feel good, but not too good. That why we hear so much about avoiding ‘pride’. So Latter-day Saints are hearing this in church this week, and thinking, yep, I sure am unworthy.

Keep them down. That’s how you keep them coming back. Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen. This is classic abuser behaviour.

I’d like to offer some good news to my Christian friends. You don’t merit the abuse that Jesus and your religion dish out. You’re better than this.

Additional lesson ideas

The kingdom of God is within you

This scripture was left out of the lesson:

Luke 17:20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

This scripture seems to imply that one can find spiritual answers inside oneself. That’s very dangerous to a hierarchical top-down model of spirituality, which is why Bruce McConkie fought it so hard. Watch as he turns it into an affirmation of the church system.

“One of the heresies which prevails in a large part of modern Christendom is the concept that Jesus did not organize a Church or set up a formal kingdom through which salvation might be offered to men. This poorly translated verse is one of those used to support the erroneous concept that the kingdom of God is wholly spiritual; that it is made up of those who confess Jesus with their lips, regardless of what church affiliation they may have; that the kingdom of God is within every person in the sense that all have the potential of attaining the highest spiritual goals; and that baptism, the laying on of hands, celestial marriage, and other ordinances and laws are not essential to the attainment of salvation.

“It is true that men have the inherent capacity to gain salvation in the celestial world; in a sense this power is within them; and so it might be said that the kingdom of God is within a person, if it is understood that such expression means that a person can gain that eternal world by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel. But it is also true that Jesus did organize his Church and did give the keys of such kingdom to legal administrators on earth. (Matt. 16:13–19.)

“Even the marginal reading in the King James Version changes the language here involved to read, ‘The kingdom of God is in the midst of you,’ meaning ‘The Church is now organized in the midst of your society.’ The Prophet’s rendering of Jesus’ thought, as such is recorded in the Inspired Version, is of course the best of all. Its essential meaning is: ‘The Church and kingdom has already been organized; it is here; it has come unto you; now enter the kingdom, obey its laws and be saved.’” (McConkie, DNTC, 1:540.)

Oh, Bruce. Is there anything you can’t turn into a reification of your authority?

Old Testament stories and the end of the world

Rather threateningly, Jesus refers to the Flood and Lot’s wife as though they were real events — thus reaffirming that he still intends to kill a lot of people at his return.

Luke 17:26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
17:27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
17:28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
17:29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
17:30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
17:31 In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.
17:32 Remember Lot’s wife.

Rapture

And that leads us to one of the first scriptures that will eventually be wound into a doctrine known as the Rapture.

Luke 17:34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
17:35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
17:36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Two men in a bed? Two women grinding? Thunderf00t once had the opportunity to interview two members of the Westboro Baptist Church, and when the interview inevitably went south, he threw this in as a last chance to offend them.

I’m posting this video, not because I’m a fan of Thunderf00t, because I found it amusing and relevant to the scripture. I actually find his anti-feminism off-putting and misguided. But here’s the clip. The relevant part starts at 15:52.

Well, that interview went down the tubes, so now let’s have a closing hymn. As so often is the case, this one’s from Morrissey, and it’s “Lost”. The relevant lyric: “Everybody’s lost. But they’re pretending they’re not.”

See you next week.

NT Lesson 7 (Miracles)

14 February 2015 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“[He] Took Our Infirmities, and Bare Our Sicknesses”

Mark 1–2; 4:35–41; 5; Luke 7:11–17

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show that science has actually accomplished everything Jesus is claimed to have done, but much better and for more people.

Reading

Jesus is really getting into the miracles in this lesson. Here’s what he’s been up to.

Jesus casts out devils.

In Mark 5, Jesus finds a man who seems to be some kind of container for unclean spirits. Jesus casts them out, but in a compassionate gesture, allows them to inhabit a herd of swine. The pigs have other ideas, and drown themselves. That’s very sad, isn’t it? Let’s imagine another ending for the piggies:

Jesus heals the sick and raises the dead

Jesus walks on water

Look out, Jesus!

Main ideas for this lesson

The Bible is wrong about unclean spirits

There are lots of exorcisms in this reading.

Luke 4:33 And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice,
4:34 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.
4:35 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not.
4:36 And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.

Luke 4:40 Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them.
4:41 And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ.

And of course, the pig episode.

The Bible teaches that mental illness is caused by demons. And, as with so many things in the Bible, it’s unhelpfully and inexcusably wrong. How easy would it have been for Jesus to point out the real causes of mental illness — psychology, biology, and genetics? Blaming it on malevolent supernatural agents is the kind of thing that pre-scientific people would have come up with.

Thankfully, most Latter-day Saints don’t seem to believe in demonic possession anymore. I still remember one time in church, where a woman had a rather violent psychotic episode in the middle of sacrament meeting. I wonder why no one performed an exorcism — perhaps no one in attendance had the experience. Instead, health services were called, the women was collected, and then jittery ward members — in an adult meeting and a separate youth meeting — were counselled by a psychiatrist and a psychologist who happened to be ward members. It was really handled very well, and all without casting out devils.

In some other Christian churches, though, exorcisms are de rigueur. Benny Hinn makes a good living out of it.

They’re so easy, even a child could do one.

While this ritual seems silly to me, the participants sure do seem to think something real is happening to them. But what’s really going on here? The psychological explanation is that people undergoing an exorcism are conforming to expectations about what is supposed to happen in an exorcism, and how the participants are supposed to behave.

Exorcisms tend to follow a predictable path. The apparent victim of possession’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic, perhaps even violent, until the exorcist casts the demonic spirit out. “Possessed” people may speak in tongues, vomit, become violently ill, or harm themselves. And while these behaviors might seem shocking, they can be easily explained.

Mental issues can cause strange behavior, and people tend to conform to expectations. This means a person experiencing an exorcism is more likely to act in ways he or she has heard of others behaving during exorcisms. Exorcisms sometimes also involve the use of potions, drugs, or fasting, each of which can induce violent illness and strange behavior. Starvation can affect brain function, and the stress of an exorcism may radically alter behavior.

In other words, both exorcist and exorcee are both playing a role. And in some cases, participants can break out of the role at inappropriate times.

“Hang on, it’s the Prince of Darkness; I gotta take this.”

And now for the part that’s not so funny: exorcisms do a lot of harm, and in some cases people get killed. Try reading this very long list of people (especially children) murdered by parents and others who believed they were possessed.

Evelyn Vasquez
Age: 6
The child had a history of sleepwalking. Her mother confessed to brutally stabbing her to death because she believe she was possessed by the devil. She was charged with murder.

Amora Bain Carson
Age: 13 months
They believed the child was possessed and tried to rid her of demons. They allegedly bludgeoned her and bit her more than 20 times. She died. Her mother and a man were arrested and held on $2 million bond.

Dane Gibson
Age: 12
After attending a fundamentalist church, they became convinced they were surrounded by demons. The boy had been held down in the yard as part of an exorcism. They were found not guilty of murder.

And on and on and on and on and on. Exorcism is a barbaric practice that has no basis in fact, and a book that claims to come from the all-knowing creator of the universe ought to reflect this.

Healings

Healings are another dodgy area. Jesus was supposed to have healed a few people of blindness and illnesses. The effect of this on us today in practical terms is about nil. Diseases in our time don’t seem amenable to healing.

Also, some types of healings never occur at Lourdes, as indicated by the comment of French writer Anatole France. On a visit to the shrine, seeing the discarded canes and crutches, he exclaimed, “What, what, no wooden legs???”

Ask: Why won’t God heal amputees?

But then some people claim that God has indeed healed people of their illnesses, and that this is evidence of God’s existence, love, and what have you. In fact, this really makes the case for God’s goodness even more problematic, not less. If God really is healing various individuals in piecemeal fashion, without addressing the underlying causes of disease and while allowing others to languish and die, then this calls God’s goodness even more into question. Why is he so capricious about who he heals? Why does he choose not to heal the rest, when he could? (What are they, chopped liver?) How does this relate to God not being “a respecter of persons”?

Watch the video for “Thank You, God” by Tim Minchin. In this video, Tim recounts the story of Sam’s mum, who allegedly got God to heal her cataracts.

Ask: What are some other explanations for Sam’s mum’s healing that Minchin mentions? Make a list. How many times can you say ‘Minchin mentions’ really fast?
If God is healing relatively well-off Westerners, then what are some illnesses God is ignoring? Why would he do that?

As with exorcisms, there’s a dark side to faith healing. News reports seem to bring a steady stream of stories of parents who kill their children by denying them medical care in the belief that God will heal them through prayer. Here’s a smattering of recent stories, and I didn’t even have to try very hard to find them.

Faith-Healing Churches Linked to 2 Dozen Child Deaths
Living on a Prayer: Why Does God Kill So Many Children in Idaho?
Faith-Healing Parents Jailed After Second Child’s Death
Big list on HuffPo

Of course, the believer could always argue that someone wasn’t healed because they didn’t have enough faith. It’s a common enough dodge; even Pat Robertson has engaged in it.

But saying that the sufferer didn’t have enough faith is really just a way of blaming the victim. It allows people to believe that faith healing is real, even when it plainly doesn’t work.

Supernaturalism is terrible at curing illness, but science has done a great job. Let’s see the totals for leprosy.

Take a look at this video of a man who is getting his life and his autonomy back by the use of robotic arms that he can control with his thoughts. This is amazing. I see it as nothing less than new-testamental, in a way that the New Testament can’t match. This, after all, is publicly verifiable.

Some people say God is responsible for medical progress. Isn’t it great of God to heal people at exactly the same time that scientists work out how to treat disease? Unless it’s really medical science doing it all, which seems to be a much more straightforward explanation.

We still have a lot to learn about the body, and progress is sometimes frustratingly slow. But in the area of human health, medical science is doing the job that God has failed to do.

Additional lesson ideas

No exorcisms in John

When you read the book of John, guess what you never see? You never see any exorcisms or cases of demonic possession. The reason is a bit of a mystery; Twelftree cites “theological considerations” which I assume means he thinks some compiler left it out on purpose. Or perhaps the synoptic texts (Matthew, Mark, Luke) just come from a different tradition that John.

For whatever reason, it’s yet another way in which the gospels tell widely varying stories about Jesus, and this should cause the reader to regard these fragmentary accounts with skepticism.

Walking on water

This miracle has been difficult to duplicate by spiritual means. Here’s a story that’s both sad and hilarious. Sadlarious.

Nigerian Pastor Tries To Walk On Water Like Jesus, Then Drowns In Front Of His Congregation
Pastor Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation that he was capable of reenacting the very miracles of Jesus Christ. He decided to make it clear through way of demonstration on Gabon’s beach in the capital city of Libreville.
Referencing Matthew 14:22-33, Kabele said that he received a revelation which told him that with enough faith he could achieve what Jesus was able to.
According to an eyewitness, Kabele took his congregation out to the beach. He told them that he would cross the Kombo estuary by foot, which is normally a 20 minute boat ride.
Sadly by the second step into the water Kabele found himself completely submerged. He never returned.

I guess he didn’t have enough faith.

On the other hand, it is possible to duplicate the feat by non-scientific means, at least well enough to fool you and me. Here’s illusionist Criss Angel doing it.

Try one of the YouTube suggested links for an explanation of how he does it.

And of course, with a little corn starch, you can walk across a non-Newtonian fluid.

Science!

Thank you for reading this week’s lesson. To finish our demonic theme, let’s have a closing hymn.

See you next week.

OT Lesson 40 (Trito-Isaiah)

26 October 2014 / Daniel Midgley / Comments Off

“Enlarge the Place of Thy Tent”

Isaiah 54–56; 63–65

LDS manual: here

Reading

Finally, we’re into the third of our three Isaiahs. Trito-Isaiah (as he’s known) likes writing about the destruction and death that will characterise the end times, but along the way, he writes some scriptures that Mormons like because they’re about church and stuff.

First up: Why did God abandon his people? Because he got a little bit angry for a while. But don’t worry, Israel; he’ll totally make it up to you.

54:7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.
54:8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.

There’s going to be a thousand years of peace on earth. The hills will be alive with the sound of music — they’ll be singing, of course — and handclaps will be provided by trees.

55:12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Trees got hands?

Death to pagans and nature-worshippers, though.

57:3 But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore.
57:4 Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out the tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood.

As kids, we used to joke that this was about French kissing. But this is no joking matter; it’s death for anyone who doesn’t serve Jehovah / Jesus.

60:12 For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.

There’s currently a debate about whether Christianity or Islam is more violent, and I’d just like to toss these scriptures onto the bad pile for Christianity.

There are some nice ideas promoted along with fasting, though.

58:6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
58:7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

Main points for this lesson

The Second Coming?

Through cherry-picking and tormented interpretation, Mormons (and Christians in general) have taken these Jewish scriptures — originally about Jehovah coming to save his people — and have somehow retooled them into a story about the Second Coming of Jesus. From the real lesson manual:

The closing chapters of Isaiah’s record present a beautiful picture of the Millennium, the thousand-year period of peace that will be ushered in by the Savior’s Second Coming.
Which I doubt was on Isaiah’s mind; if anything, he would have been focused on the First Coming.

Here’s a particularly egregious example from the manual:

3. Christ’s Second Coming (Isaiah 63:1–6)
• The Second Coming of the Savior is described in Isaiah 63:1–6. What color will the Savior’s robe be when he comes in his glory? (See Isaiah 63:2; Revelation 19:11–13; D&C 133:46–48.)

Oooh! I know this one from one of those Mormon trivia games. The answer is “red”.

63:2 Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?

Yay, ten points. Then the manual asks:

What does the red color symbolize? (The blood that he shed when he suffered for our sins in Gethsemane and on the cross.)

No, no, no. You don’t have to read very far to see that it’s not his own blood. In the very next verses, he says it’s the blood of everyone else that he treads on in his fury. That’s right; at the last day he’s going to kill everyone, and he’s going to get their blood all over his clothes!

63:3 I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.
63:4 For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.
63:5 And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me; and my fury, it upheld me.
63:6 And I will tread down the people in mine anger, and make them drunk in my fury, and I will bring down their strength to the earth.

It’s this kind of clueless and dishonest reading that typefies Christian attempts to retcon Jewish scriptures into Christian doctrine. However, it does put a new spin on this Minerva Teichert painting.

Look out; it’s Jesus coming to trample us! HELP! auuugghhhhhhh… crunch

God’s ways are not your ways, and your ways suck

Here’s a scripture about the sabbath that’s definitely in the Mormon Top 40.

58:13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:
58:14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

It seems that on the Sabbath, you’re supposed to do the things God wants. Fine and dandy. But there’s something troubling here. According to Isaiah, you’re not supposed to find your own pleasure, do your own ways, or even say your own words. Isn’t this kind of odd? There’s an assumption here that doing things your way is wrong. If you want something, it’s either wrong or inconsequential.

And this is something that I was constantly told: “You want the wrong thing, but God wants the right thing for you. Don’t do your thing; do his thing.” You are wrong, and your desires are wrong. And in this way, you’re taught to mistrust your own instincts about what is right, to second-guess your innate human sense of right and wrong, and replace it with whatever the church says.

I don’t think this is so. I think I want good things. More so than God, in fact; I want people to be kind, have a nice life, get enough to eat, and God wants to bespatter his clothes in the blood of heathens.

Just to continue this theme, here’s what I think is #3 on the list of Worst Scriptures of All Time:

55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

I’m counting this scripture as one of the worst for a couple of reasons. First, it has the aforementioned “God is good, you suck” meme. But second, it’s so often used as a thought-blocker. If God’s ways are not our ways, then we can’t rely on our own intuitions for how a god would do things. And that means that if something in church history or church doctrine is absurd, contradictory, or just morally repugnant, it doesn’t matter — God does things different! It excuses everything, and there’s nothing more to say about the matter.

But, the Christian says, what’s wrong with the idea that God knows more about morality than we do? Aren’t we really just demanding that he conform to our way of morality?

Well, let me respond this way: I’m just a regular human, with regular human morality, and even I can see that God’s way of doing things is fucked up.

If these are his ways, then I want no part of them. I am more moral than the being that’s described in the Bible.

The big news at the time of this writing is that the church has released an anonymous essay about polygamy in Nauvoo and Kirtland. This is the most overt admission from the Church that Joseph Smith married 14-year-old girls, and other men’s wives.

I love this bit:

Although the Lord commanded the adoption—and later the cessation—of plural marriage in the latter days, He did not give exact instructions on how to obey the commandment.

Isn’t that just like Jehovah? It’s important enough for him to send an angel with a flaming sword to force Joseph to fuck a teen, but when it comes to details of implementation, he’s like, “Eh, do whatever.” What a colossal doofus!

(“Mental note to Myself: Do a better job when explaining who’s supposed to be president of the church after Joseph.”)

I discussed this essay with a Latter-day Saint, and they gave the expected rationales:

This isn’t new information.
It happened a long time ago.
The important thing is that they stopped polygamy.

But the ultimate thought-blocker was:

I don’t understand why Heavenly Father would do that, but I’m sure I will when I get up there.

And that was really the end of the discussion. You’re dealing with a hyper-intelligent being who you can’t possibly comprehend. So don’t try. Essentially, it’s like saying “A wizard did it. Don’t think about it. A wizard did it.”

Out of all the people God could have chosen to found his church, why did he pick a known swindler and story-teller like Joseph Smith? Someone who he knew in advance would bed 14-year-olds, mother-daughter pairs, and other men’s wives — in short, someone who he knew would act like, to all appearances, a 19th century sex guru? Why would he go to all the trouble of making his church look dodgy? Well, God’s ways are higher than your ways. There’s no inconsistency or flat-out con job that you can’t excuse with this idea.

The irony here is that it’s this claim that God is super-human that is meant to distract us from noticing that his church and his modus operandi are actually very human. Everything we see about the Morg is exactly what we should expect to see if humans were running it. The problem is not that God’s ways are higher than our ways, but that his ways mirror ours too closely. We should expect more.

Everything you do is terrible

This one is a favourite scripture for the Pentecostals I’ve met:

64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Again, same old story. No matter what you could ever do, it would still be awful. If you’re going to be worth anything, it won’t be because of anything you do. It’ll be because you attached yourself to someone else.

Have a look at these graphics that Christians use to illustrate this point.

Ask: How do they make you feel about your efforts? Do they encourage you to do your best? Or do they encourage you to shrink into reliance on someone besides yourself? What effect might this have on your self-esteem? Why would it be beneficial to a church for its members to feel helpless in their own efforts?
Possible answer: The helplessness engendered by this idea keeps you coming back for more.

This is not an idea that builds self-reliant people. It creates broken people.

On reflection, I should point out that Mormons aren’t that big on this scripture, probably because it rubs up against their ideas on the importance of personal righteousness. I actually never heard this scripture until I got into the mission field. So this criticism belongs more to other sorts of Christian folk.

Additional teaching ideas

Stakes

The lesson is big on stakes. The manual even helpfully says:

If you use the attention activity, bring a tent stake.

This is if no one has seen a tent stake before, or in case a vampire shows up to Sunday School.

For the lesson manual, Isaiah’s exhortation to “enlarge the place of thy tent” means: missionary work!

Isaiah’s Counsel

Stretch the tent curtains and lengthen the cords.

Strengthen the tent stakes.

What We Can Do

Serve as full-time missionaries; share the gospel with friends and neighbors.

Strengthen our local stakes.

I’m having a bit of a beef with missionary work these days. The old slogan is “Every member a missionary”, but in my experience, very few missionaries or members are familiar with the more uncomfortable areas of church history. That Joseph Smith used a magical rock in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon, or even that he had multiple wives, isn’t on their radar. The new essays, anonymous and unannounced, haven’t penetrated into the awareness of the membership.

What that means is that people are serving missions — sacrificing time, money, energy, and opportunity — for a church they scarcely know, and without full knowledge of what they’re representing. Full, informed consent is still lacking.

Common phrases

I noticed two phrases in this reading that have worked their way into our lexicon.

Game. Which phrase actually appears in the Bible?

There is no rest for the wicked.
There is no rest for the weary.
There is no peace for the wicked.

Answer: None of them! Here’s the actual scripture.

57:21 There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

Yes, it’s always the prepositions that trip people up. This is a bit of evidence to show how prepositions have changed since the King James Translation of 1611.

The phrase “holier than thou” also appears in this reading. Jehovah / Jesus is talking about the kind of people that really piss him off.

65:5 Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day.

I hear ya, Jehovah.

Male lactation

Finally, a look at what Israel’s diet will consist of in the Millennium.

60:16 Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

Probably a metaphor. Yeah, that’s it.

An ex-Mormon take on LDS Sunday School lessons

Category: you are bad

“Alma . . . Did Judge Righteous Judgments”

Mosiah 29; Alma 1–4

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Nether

Amlici

They had marked themselves

Additional lesson ideas

It’s not you

“Eternally Indebted to Your Heavenly Father”

Mosiah 1–3

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Unprofitable servants

Why the Gospel is terrible

1. We have been created with an inbuilt tendency to sin.

2. We can’t trust our own moral compass.

3. Satan

4. Self-esteem sniping

Additional lesson ideas

Every pore?

“O How Great the Goodness of Our God”

2 Nephi 6–10

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Believe or die

Being learned

Are the Q15 liars?

Cake or death, pt 2

“Beloved of God, Called to Be Saints”

Romans

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Unbelievers are evil

Everyone is bad.

It’s because of Adam

Faith, not works

Not ashamed

Additional lesson ideas

Christianity’s weird relationship with Jews

Christianity’s weird relationship with secular government

Overcome evil with good

“Not My Will, But Thine, Be Done”

Matthew 26:36–46; Mark 14:32–42; Luke 22:39–46

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Jesus tries to pike out

Blood from every pore?

Problems with the Atonement

The suffering was unnecessary

The nature of the “debt” is never explained

Ransom

Nothing more should be required

We “can’t understand”

Vicarious suffering for sin is immoral

“He Was Lost, and Is Found”

Luke 15; 17

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

Lost sheep

Children

Unprofitable servants

Additional lesson ideas

The kingdom of God is within you

Old Testament stories and the end of the world

Rapture

“[He] Took Our Infirmities, and Bare Our Sicknesses”

Mark 1–2; 4:35–41; 5; Luke 7:11–17

Purpose

Reading

Main ideas for this lesson

The Bible is wrong about unclean spirits

Healings