There has been quite a discussion lately about the Book of Mormon. The attitude of some people, including parts of the scientific community, is that the Book of Mormon has “finally” been definitively proven wrong and we can “move on” without having to walk on eggshells around the faith of this strange religion full of angels, gold plates, and polygamy.
Not so fast.
The Book of Mormon itself has always stipulated that the remnant of its people were changed genetically between the time of their departure from Israel and their discovery by Columbus. Joseph Smith never asserted that the Jews and the American Indians even looked alike physically, much less genetically. Quite the opposite; the Book of Mormon is full of assertions that the people were changed dramatically in appearance. How else would God carry that out without rewriting their genetic code?
In fact, the Book of Mormon’s assertion that the Lamanites’ physical changes (specifically, their darkened skin) was a curse due to wickedness is a politically-incorrect concept that has been criticized vocally (by the same people who point to genetic research as evidence of Book of Mormon flaws!)
Additionally, the Book of Mormon is not the story of a single group of people. Nor is the known secular history of the indigenous peoples that was collected during the European exploration and conquest the story of a single group of people. Admittedly, members and even some high ranking leaders have been quoted attempting to shoehorn genealogies and geographies to make the specific American Indians that we have today pure descendants of specific groups in the Book of Mormon. And there may be some errors in those statements. Fortunately, Mormons do not believe their leadership is infallible.
Critical to an understanding of the doctrines and thought of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an understanding of two topics: agency and revelation.
Agency is this: The ability to make decisions for ourselves. In order to progress and grow as children on this earth, we had to be separated from the presence of God to be tested and tried. If God interferes in our agency – our ability to choose - it would inhibit that growth. The expectation that faith must be provable is unreasonable under that system.
A real understanding of that teaching means that members should not expect their religion to be provable by a genetic test. Or by an incontrovertible prophetic prediction. Or a large-scale carefully attributed miracle. I would go so far as to say that if the Lord had expected genetic tests to demonstrate to the world that the American Indians are pure descendants of the house of Israel, he might have prevented those tests from becoming developed.
That is not to say that we do not have plenty of evidences for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. But it is to say that they will likely not be strong enough by themselves (that is, without a witness by the spirit) to prove our case. For example, part of the evidence that has convinced me personally comes from the textual understanding of human behavior and motive and interaction. I am impressed and even awed by the insights there – things that would not have been available to the experience of the text’s young, relatively uneducated frontier translator. The older I get the more it awes me. The very best fiction writers of our day all lack something that the Book of Mormon has in terms of depth.
On to Revelation: Revelation, whether written scripturally, received as impressions personally, or announced prophetically, has never been a simple thing. It is nuanced. It is complex. It is revisable. It is revocable. It is local, variable, applicable. There are cultural and linguistic imperfections introduced by its recipients and its interpreters.
Our belief in a pure source and pure revelation, and in the designation of an authorized mouthpiece of it for governing the church (a Prophet) does not mean we believe in any sort of infallibility other than the Savior’s. It takes a lifetime of effort to learn to receive, interpret , act upon, and interpret revelation. People –individuals and even prophets – make mistakes. Misapplication, misinterpretation, mispronunciation, and misattribution plague the process.
The only way to eliminate all of those things is to have God himself appear and speak on every subject at every time in perfect language… and that would interfere with our development and our agency. One cannot expect revelation to come easily, to be easy to recognize, to be fulfilled the way we expected in each instance. One cannot hope to put time frames to it, or to be able to test it and prove it scientifically.
Be assured that that does not make revelation – scriptural, personal, or prophetic – less real, less pure, or less relevant. It just makes it harder. But that is as it is supposed to be. That approach to revelation is not new; it is Biblical. The reformers understood it. The Savior understood it. Moses understood it.
We are all born (whether “Mormons or not”) with an innate sense of revelation (we call it the “Light of Christ”). When we become old most all of us seem to draw toward it again. It is magnified further if we choose to be baptized under proper authority and to make and keep covenants to receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost. We enhance its usefulness and our understanding of it as we gain experience, struggle to understand it, and use it to bless others.
I am confident that, for all of its "problems", revelation is alive and well in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in my own life.
I acknowledge that some may see this as a cop-out. A blanket explanation for failed prophecies, for religion generally, for the so-called conflicts between faith and science. I suppose that is in how we choose to see things. I choose to see things through a lens of faith. That has served me well throughout my life. It has not removed life’s difficulties, but it has given me tools for enduring it well and for blessing others in the process, and for feeling peace. So I am going to stick with it.
Now, I know that some members of the church have taken an even more progressive approach to dealing with some of these topics. They believe that we should see the Book of Mormon as parable, perhaps a well-inspired metaphor. And that reconciles the account in their minds. That is up to them. Perhaps they are right and I am wrong. They are welcome to believe as they choose. But for me, I still have more than enough evidence that the Book of Mormon, with all of its oddities and whatever imperfections it may exhibit, is exactly what it claims to be – a translation of the sacred understandings of a few different groups of people and their dealings with our God.
