List of questions/family woes.

[Anonymous]

Ok. I have to explain my situation before listing things. My dad might be reading this(i think he reads exmormon mostly), who knows, but here goes:

My dad is very much against the church. My mom is very pro-church. From what I understand my dad feels like he has been lied to, regarding church history etc (totally understandable). He has been very private about the matter, and isn’t really a talker when it comes to feelings (as many great dads around the world). He as been pretty much obsessed with church history for the past 10 (or more) years. Leaving the rest of the family being witness to him slowly getting older, way too fast – because of him constantly focusing on negative things. I am not saying that investigating church history is a negative, nor readjusting or even loosing your faith is necessarily a bad thing, but focusing on negative things about any religion/person, and channeling a lot of anger that way, can easily cause anyone to wither… He isn’t the “well, the church just isn’t true – i’ll get on with my life then”-type of person. He lingers in the negative things. – I perfectly understand that people feel angry for any given time, and take time to adjust their world view – but excessively focusing on something negative doesn’t do anyone any good.

This has caused a lot of tension between my parents of course.

My mother has always has had a very open mind when it comes to religion. She isn’t a literal believer in many of the the old testament things for instance, and she is very open to there being a lot more to religion/the afterlife than we know in mormonism. Her religious life is the very core of her existence, and she simply loves the gospel.

She accepts my fathers change when it comes to religion, so have the rest of the family – In my view we have all been very supportive, and i honestly don’t care at all if he’s a member of the church or not, as long as he is happy.

In the past, my father has been pushing for my mother to read material that “explains that the church cannot be true”. She has refused to read it in the past because they each hold different opinions and thats it basically – she/family dont try to convince him he is wrong, neither should he convince us of anything else. That has changed though, and she has decided to read a thing he gave her. (to see if that could make things better between them).http://mormonthink.com/personalstories/A_Letter_to_a_CES_Director.pdf” class=”bbcode_url”>http://mormonthink.com/personalstories/A_Letter_to_a_CES_Director.pdf

My father has asked my mother to read the above letter and write down her thoughts about some of the chapters in the letter.

She has then in turn given me the papers (after she read through them) and asked if i could look them over and, if I felt like it, give an explanation, just to a couple of the chapters/points and hand them to her and she might give them to him. (yeah.. its a mess i know).

To me, the church being completely false or completely true is not possible. Its a mix – but my father believes it is completely false – and my mother wants him to know that at least it could be true to some extend.

A couple of days ago i confronted him, saying basically that i know of all the hard issues, and I don’t blame you at all for not believing. That I was saying these things because i didnt want him to feel misunderstood/alone or feeling that I was “in the dark” about the history. I told him I didnt want to discuss the details about the problems with lds history, but that I was still going to church. I think he might have understood this in the way that I just went there because it was “nice”/a cultural thing).I also made the point that maybe he should be focusing his time elsewhere, on something more uplifting.

The whole deal felt like a positive, though at some times, awkward conversation, but at least it was talked through a bit. It is a VERY fine line to talk about this stuff, and the last thing I want to end up with is hurting our father/son relationship because of this, but at the same time I want to help out, just a tiny bit. I have NO intention of bringing my father back to the church – I just feel that he should see that there are more than one side of the matter.

-A have my own family and live away from my parents, so I am not in the middle of it, thankfully.

Ok, now you know the background:

It is of course best to go to the original pdf i linked to, as it is a lot more in depth, but:

The main points in the letter are these(nothing new):

-KJV errors.

-Anacronysms (horses etc).

-No archeological evidence for BOM.

-BOM was a copy of the “View of the Hebrews”.

-Peepstone/face in the hat.

-Conflicting first versions of the first vision.

-BoA – the “normal” issues, but focusing a lot on the facsimiles – If viewing the original papyri(that has nothing to do with Abraham) as a catalyst for inspiration for story about abraham, Why would he start translating the the facsimilies then?).

-Polygamy/polyandry.

My mother knows that I know about many of the issues – and that i recently (the past 5 years or so) have gone through a faith crisis, but have come out “church” going on the other side. Actually I have never felt as close to God as I do now – because, going through church history/faith crisis, has made me see that “mormonism” is a lot more flexible than the culture wants it to be – but my story is another topic all together. Let’s just say that my faith crisis has been the most faith promoting thing for me ever, but at the same time I can never view the church as black and white as I did before.

As stated, i know of these issues, and have gotten over them in the past, though some are still a mystery to my (the whole idea of polygamy, and especially how JS went about frightening women into marrying him, and the BOA issues).

Before writing my own little snippets to some of the points, it would be great to have some of your explanations/thougths on these issues, from a faithful perspective.(though of course not necessarily from a black/white perspective). The more the marrier.

Thanks a million!! And if you are reading this dad –

I love you and respect you no matter what in the world you believe or do not believe, and please, with the most deepfelt respect and love – make that go both ways.

[Anonymous]

From my own perspective, however that might be classified, and focusing only on the “faithful” possibilities (with the exception of the last one), since you asked for that approach:

-KJV errors

The recent post on this has a bunch of comments, but the nutshell version for me would be that Joseph used the words with which he was familiar to express the meaning he “saw”. It happens all the time in translations (choosing familiar words), and it’s why there are so many (very) different translations of the Bible, for example.

-Anacronysms (horses etc).

Addressed in at least two posts in out archives. Search for the word “anachronism” to find them. Frankly, with all of the research over the last 20 years or so, nearly all of the things that were considered anachronisms in the past have at least a possible answer now – including horses and elephants. The Huns were reported to have had hundreds of thousands of horses, and there is no physical evidence of that, even though they lived LONG after the Book of Mormon time period.

-No archeological evidence for BOM.

So what? We don’t know exactly where it occurred, and there is no archaeological evidence of Moses or lions mentioned in the BIble (among many other things in it) – and there is no evidence whatsoever of anything recorded about Jesus, except that he probably lived and died as recorded.

-BOM was a copy of the “View of the Hebrews”.

It wasn’t. They are extremely different stories.

-Peepstone/face in the hat.

So what? “Translated by the gift and power of God” opens the door wide open to how it could have happened – and it’s not like that part of the translation method is hidden by the Church. It’s documented in many places.

-Conflicting first versions of the first vision.

So what? Memories morph over time, and stories are told in different ways to different people for different purposes. I’ve had some extremely powerful experiences, and I know my memories of them are different now than they were when they happened.

-BoA – the “normal” issues, but focusing a lot on the facsimiles – If viewing the original papyri(that has nothing to do with Abraham) as a catalyst for inspiration for story about abraham, Why would he start translating the facsimilies then?).

I view the Book of Abraham as classic midrash – so I have no problem with it. That means I view it as more of a “transmission” than a “translation” – and history if full of examples of exactly that sort of production.

-Polygamy/polyandry.

Much, much more complicated than most people are willing to consider, but fundamentally a mistake the way it started and ended, in my opinion. “We have learned by sad experience . . .” When extraordinary people make mistakes, those mistakes tend to be extraordinary, as well. We either believe “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” or we don’t. I believe it, so, while I loathe the angel with a drawn sword story, I don’t discount it as fabricated. I simply believe it might have been Joseph having a vision that was not of God – but I still accept him as a prophet in every meaningful way and still love the man I have seen through all the research I’ve done about him.

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

-Anacronysms (horses etc).

Addressed in at least two posts in out archives. Search for the word “anachronism” to find them. Frankly, with all of the research over the last 20 years or so, nearly all of the things that were considered anachronisms in the past have at least a possible answer now – including horses and elephants. The Huns were reported to have had hundreds of thousands of horses, and there is no physical evidence of that, even though they lived LONG after the Book of Mormon time period.

Sorry, Ray but I can’t let this one pass. There may not be evidence for horses in the distant past as regards the Huns but the horses are still there all across the that part of eastern Europe, Asia Minor and Asia but not in the Americas. Where did they go? What happened to arguably the most single valuable domesticated animal in the development of civilization? It was the animal along with oxen and cattle that led to the invention of the wheel. With the introduction of the horse since Columbus the numbers have increased and now the wild horse population in the American west is such that they are considered a nuisance. I know I said I wasn’t going to continue to bring this up but the answers don’t work for me. When I said earlier that it made me want to discard the BoM, it wasn’t the message, just the claims of historicity.

[Anonymous]

Hi Bear :wave:

I’ll give you my two cents…

Bear wrote:

-KJV errors.

-Anacronysms (horses etc).

-No archeological evidence for BOM.

-BOM was a copy of the “View of the Hebrews”.

-Peepstone/face in the hat.

-Conflicting first versions of the first vision.

-BoA – the “normal” issues, but focusing a lot on the facsimiles – If viewing the original papyri(that has nothing to do with Abraham) as a catalyst for inspiration for story about abraham, Why would he start translating the the facsimilies then?).

-Polygamy/polyandry.

Yup. Our religion is the product of a certain time and place (“spiritual awakening”, “burned over district”) and has definite influences from the history of the area, our country, and the Smith family specifically. We might accept that God was resposible for this general “awakening” and even that He touched the heart of JS in some unique way, but I believe that much religious expiramentation was conducted by flawed humans doing the best that they knew how to recreate the church described in the Bible. I also believe that there were cases of abuse and “unrighteous dominion” – some of it by accident and some of it by design. I see similar things in the history of most religions.

Bringing us to today – We have a flawed church, led by flawed (and IMO good) men, that may not have any special connection to God. It is frustrating that unflattering church history elements have been withheld. It is frustrating that Church culture seems to put forward a “one way, my way” perspective (or at least “one way, God’s way”). After all that, is there enough good left to remain?

That question is an individual one. For me personally the answer was “no.” The remaining good in the church was not enough for me to give everything the church seems to ask for. The cost-benefit analysis did not pan out. I had to reduce the costs until I felt comfortable and that is what I have done. I feel at peace with myself and with my God and …..(wait for it)….I’m a Mormon. :thumbup:

[Anonymous]

For me the effects of all the listed (and other) issues tend to boil down to our expectations of church leadership. If we expect their words and actions to always be reliable and Godly we will be disappointed. If we expect their teachings to be sometimes inspired, and we recognize our job is to test all their words and follow the spirit while gaining wisdom for ourselves – then we are in a stronger and more positive position.

Can a man be both flawed and sometimes a mouthpiece for the divine? I think so, I think that can describe all of us.

Is a prophet an extraordinary person? I say a prophet is an ordinary person with an extraordinary calling.

The idea that the BoM has to be historical to be useful spiritually is absurd.

[Anonymous]

I’m pretty sympathetic to all of those points and questions listed. I don’t think they can just be dismissed, or claim there are “answers” to categorically resolve them. Or I think that book would have been published and everyone would see it can’t be debated.

What I like best about your approach is that you care more about your dad than about trying to prove you are “right”. That is a good place to start.

Has your dad read Rough Stone Rolling? To me, that is a good source of information that lets the reader decide what to make of it without dismissing the problems, but has a positive approach to Joseph Smith.

I also think that many of these points to discuss are common to any religion. Focusing on one specific element of it (i.e. historicity) is like the buddhist teaching of the blind men and the elephant…only looking at the leg can lead to someone being sure from their point of view that it is a trunk of a tree.

Honestly, I don’t know how to resolve those disagreements. People can only see what they allow themselves to see…whether that is Fowler’s stage 3 view the church is true or the stage 3 view the church is false, being absolutely sure that others are wrong to think otherwise.

Bottom line…there are many things we just don’t know. So, all else is speculation, including church leaders speculating. I can accept that.

But here are my thoughts briefly:

KJV errors and anachronisms and archeology issues with the book of mormon: If this was necessary to prove Mormonism, the problem remains for Christianity to prove the Bible, Judaism to prove the Torah, Islam to prove the Quran. At some point in religion, we let go of certainty and find reasons to accept things on faith, because in my opinion, there is no other option…these problems exist in our scriptures…in all scriptures.

Peepstone and BoA – Scrolls may have been a talisman to initiate revelation similar to the peepstone or the golden plates. But the RSR book also showed how Joseph was comfortable with a magical world, and it produced some interesting things. It seems to certainly be a gift. But I also hear the stories of the skeleton Zelph, and I don’t know what to make of the things that did not seem to make sense. Chalk them up to probabilities instead of certainties around revelation, perhaps. But I can have skepticism about revelation without dismissing all outright.

Conflicting first versions of the first vision – I just let go of certainty or the idea Joseph was a blank canvas and the Lord wrote everything on it for him. It had to be processed through mortals, and retold to mortals, and recorded by mortals and understood in councils of mortals.

Polygamy/polyandry – I just have nothing. Don’t understand it, and sure glad it is gone. I only think that many other restorationist movement people were reading into the bible trying to restore everything that was in there, not just mormons. And I believe it was less about perversion as it was about trying to establish the Kindgom of God from Heavenly Laws to earthly practice. For me, it is even more problematic from a doctrine point of view that it was lived for decades, and then removed completely than the fact it was tried at all. Ya…its a tough one I simply don’t know about.

How have you been able to come through your crisis, and have you shared those views with him?

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot for all the comments! Keep them coming! I’ll describe my own journey later (don’t have time atm). I “broke the ice” and told him I knew about all the problems but didn’t want to discuss details (yet). I didn’t want to go any further (at that point) because I didn’t want the discussion turning into an “anti” vs “pro” church discussion – though I sensed he wanted to. The whole point in telling him was to let him know that he wasn’t alone with this information. That I could totally understand where he came from and that I didn’t want him to think the rest of the family was kept in the dark regarding church history. I also wanted to let him know, I knew the history because it could potentially ease the pressure between my parents. He only talks to her about church stuff and it is always negative and can only take it out on her.

Step 2 could be letting him know that it’s not black and white. I see my self as a stage 4 person but him a very hard liner stage 3. The next step would be to somehow let him see that nuances are possible.

But it’s tricky. The last thing I want to do is to break down our relationship, but still I feel obliged to let him know that another view is at least possible.

Thanks again for your comments and thoughts! Very appreciated!! I’ll tell my story at some point:)

[Anonymous]

I’ve only got one little point on one of your issues: KJV errors in the BoM.

In the distant past, I was a translator for the Church – I translated and interpreted General Conference, First Presidency messages, Liahona articles, etc. As you might imagine, these media often involved lengthy quotes from the scriptures, from previous General Conference addresses, previous First Presidency messages, etc. When I came across a quote from, say, the D&C in a General Conference talk, I wouldn’t just translate the words I saw on the master document – I would, instead, go to the section of the D&C in the second language and just lift the language out and put it into my translation. If someone were quoting from a previous General Conference talk, I would see if I could find that previous talk in the second language, and just lift the translation out word for word. In that sense, I was relying on the previous translation of whomever had translated the D&C for the Church those years before – no need to re-create a translation for something that already exists. Plus, I didn’t want to confuse the members reading or hearing my talk/article – I wanted them to be able to follow along in the D&C if they recognized the quote. Even if I’d felt that I could have done a more meaningful translation of the quoted language, I stuck with the original for the sake of continuity.

In that same vein I can see JS sticking to the familiar language from Isaiah in the KJV rather than re-translating in his own language. Perhaps because of my experience as a Church translator, I’m actually not put off at all by the KJV “errors” that were faithfully reproduced in the BoM.

[Anonymous]

Just want to follow up. My parents are doing a LOT better now. I helped my mom write a small letter/response to my dad for the document I linked to in the first post. (Only some of the parts).

It also helped a lot that my mom understands a lot better now that everything isn’t white but grey, when it comes to the church.

Before they were on the brink of divorce and now they are actually doing a lot better. It’s like someone dusted off my dad’s brain or something. He had been very somber and “grey” in his expression/mood since he had the faith crisis. Now he is actually back again!

Thanks a lot for the support and have a great day:)

[Anonymous]

Good to hear that Bear.

In case there are still questions, fairmormon recently took on the CES letter.

http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Online_documents/Letter_to_a_CES_Director

I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s a useful perspective.

[Anonymous]

Wow, that’s great news.

I’m reading all of this for the first time and I’ll say that the letter to the CES director is a doosey. In some ways the letter has a contentious undertone but that may be a bias that I read into it. Still…

Every once in a while on my mission I was paired up with companions that loved to “Bible bash.” I didn’t really ascribe to the practice myself because the fruits of such activities always (100% of the time with no other outcome) resulted in both parties walking away from the experience even more entrenched in their original views. No one changed their minds, no one came away seeing things from a different perspective, it wasn’t an edifying experience.

I don’t mean to disparage your father or anyone else that has presented this letter to someone in a challenging manner, I do see how the letter can be a great tool to explain the particulars of a faith crisis. 1) It articulates many feelings that I share much better than I could articulate them without taking a great deal of time to do so. 2) I’m not very public with my internal struggles but if I wanted to be public about them I can see the letter as being beneficial in that explaining a faith crisis over and over again can be very exhausting.

All that said I think that a certain spirit has to be held by all parties when the letter is discussed, otherwise I can see how the experience would have similar fruits as a Bible bashing session. A seed might be planted but overall people would walk away further entrenched in their original viewpoints… and it might place a strain on the interpersonal relationship as well.

I won’t comment on all of them but:

KJV errors: I thought Kumahito had very good insight into that issue. I was a translator for some time too, but not in the “big leagues.” More often than not translation isn’t a 1:1 conversion from one language to another. To borrow Ray’s word there has to be a transmission of ideas. E.g. think how someone might translate Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” a 1:1 translation would produce a very different translation than a transmission of the originally intended idea. I added this here but I think it helps with some of the other things mentioned in the letter.

BoA: I’m fatigued on this particular issue, it was the linchpin to my faith crisis, but here are some thoughts. These are from memory BTW, I could consult my notes if anyone felt like they wanted a little more concrete info.

[Anonymous]

This is so good to hear. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[Anonymous]

Its good to hear it is moving in a positive direction with dialogue. I was worried, honestly, that from your initial posts you were taking on a lot of responsibility to intervene in your parents’ relationship. Perhaps you are doing good in facilitating, but it can be dangerous to try to “fix” others. I hope you are doing OK with it. You need to have your own life to live, without fixing your parents’ problems.

But you sound like you have a great approach in respecting each perspective and breaking down the “black or white” mentality.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I can see what it could look like when i reread the posts I made.

But don’t worry. I have my own family to take care of and I have been cautious from the beginning that I shouldn’t end up solving my parents problems. It’s more been a labour of love.

AND! As an added bonus I am now talking a lot with the stake pres. who is asking me a lot about church issues. He is a great open minded guy who is sorting through all the “stuff” (reading books – listening to podcasts) and asking for my perspective on things. He isn’t going through a faith crisis but he is trying to help the ones who are.

Thanks again for all the support here. 🙂 I even recommended this forum to him, and to let other people who are going through crisises come here and take a breather. He seemed very happy when I told him about this place.

[Anonymous]

Just make sure he knows we are .com, not .org – since there is a cyber-squatting anti-Mormon who grabbed that url shortly after we started. I wouldn’t want anyone, much less a Stake President, going to the wrong site and having a heart attack – especially one who sounds as wonderful as yours.

[Author]

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