On Scripture and Historical Truth

I've been mulling this essay over in my head for years. There are a couple of early attempts at it among my more ancient draft posts. But it has taken me a while to accumulate the perspective I think I really needed to grapple with this question in a way that feels satisfying to me. Lacking sufficient perspective, I was willing to table the discussion, and let my disjointed, contradictory thought processes bounce around off each other, awaiting new information or insights.

I'll start by saying that questions about the historicity of the Book of Mormon or the Bible were not among the chief intellectual problems that troubled me at the time I left the Mormon Church in the mid 1980s. I first became somewhat aware of potential problems related to Book of Mormon historicity when an archaeology professor of mine at BYU admitted to a number of dumbfounded students in an after-class discussion that, "not only is there not much archaeological evidence supporting the Book of Mormon, but much of what we know from archaeology seems to conflict with the Book of Mormon."

Oddly at the time, as shocking as that admission sounded coming from a BYU professor, the following admission was actually the one that upset me more profoundly. When we asked him how he could reconcile what he knew as an archaeologist with his faith in the Church, he told us that he simply wore "two different hats." On Sunday, he took off his archaeologist hat and put on his faithful, testimony-bearing, Church-member hat. In the classroom, he did the opposite. That -- to me at the time -- seemed the more profound betrayal. I vowed that I would never wear separate hats. I would always pursue truth from an integrated perspective, refusing to compromise and refusing to compartmentalize as this professor had seemingly done.

It was only much later, many years after I had left the Church, that I started to read about some of the specific historical and archaeological criticisms leveled against the Book of Mormon. And it was only again many years after that, as I returned to the faith, that I became aware of the various dialogs among different groups of Mormon and non-Mormon intellectuals about the implications of secular research for LDS belief in what Joseph Smith called "the keystone of our our religion," the book without which there can be no rational basis for believing in "Mormonism."

One of the most profound spiritual experiences I had, the spiritual experience that more than anything set the course for my current path, occurred when I started to read the Book of Mormon again. I knew that I could not read the Book of Mormon -- or any scripture -- without the Spirit to guide me, and so I prayed to God for the first time in many years. And then following the powerful experience I had as a result of that prayer, I began to read the Book of Mormon daily, and found the Spirit testifying to me frequently and teaching me through its pages. So I had a renewed testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, but it was a spiritual testimony. Not based on painstaking archaeological or historical or linguistic or DNA research, but more the type of testimony that is best described in the Book of Mormon itself, in Alma 32, where you plant a seed of faith, and you water it and nurture it, and as it grows you experience the goodness and truth of it. You grow.

So I can say that while I lost faith largely as a result of my struggles related to being gay, I matured back into the faith as a result of reading the Book of Mormon.

I was still very aware of the "problems" related to accepting the Book of Mormon as true in some objective, historical sense, and not just as a poetic communication of spiritual truths. I am still very interested in reading anything and everything related to Book of Mormon historicity; and I recognize that much of the debate and scholarship on this subject poses not just intellectual but spiritual challenges to Mormonism. But my spiritual witness of "Mormonism" and of the Book of Mormon is such that it does not trouble me to accept that there are "problems" or "challenges" from a secular, historical point of view. I'm willing to continue to accumulate knowledge, to view this as an open question. I can say there is much we still do not know from a historical or archaeological point of view, probably far more than what we do know. So I need not cancel out faith based on what we do know from a secular perspective.

What I have learned through a methodology of faith has enabled me to progress as a human being; it has taught me patience, hope and love. What I have learned (and continue to learn) through secular study of history teaches me humility. It teaches me to have respect for others whose beliefs are different from my own. It teaches me the value of reason as a moral faculty. So I respect secular learning, I love it. But I see no reason to let it override my deepest spiritual impulses.

There are other web sites that document the various challenges and counter-challenges in relation to Book of Mormon historicity. There are the historical arguments about whether the Book of Mormon was more likely to have been produced by 19th-century U.S. culture than by ancient Hebrew-American prophets between 600 B.C. and 400 A.D. There are linguistic and textual arguments about whether or not there are parallels between Book of Mormon texts and ancient Middle Eastern texts. There are archaeological arguments about the lack of evidence of horses and steel and writing in pre-Columbian America; not to mention the difficulty of connecting actual real-world locales to the sites described in the Book of Mormon. There are the debates over what DNA evidence about the ancestry of Native Americans can or cannot tell us about possible infusions of Middle Eastern DNA into the gene pool of this hemisphere. And of course there are the debates over the verisimilitude of Joseph Smith's claims about angelic visitations and golden plates. I think I've covered all the main lines of discussion...

Faithful Mormon scholars have, I think, been the underdogs in many of these debates. They have generally been on the defensive, focusing on making room for faith. The best ones, I think, have succeeded, but not without surrendering first some of the more naive assumptions about the Book of Mormon shared by the majority of LDS faithful who don't trouble themselves with these issues. But underdogs or not, I think all that needs to be accomplished, from a viewpoint of faith, is to make room for faith. So whether or not faithful Mormon scholars persuade their secular colleagues of their scholarly point of view or not is ultimately irrelevant as concerns issues of faith.

There is no reason why scholars of ancient American or Near Eastern history should pursue their studies with a goal of proving scriptural texts -- or with any goal at all, other than to unearth more data about the past. Nor is there any reason why faithful scholars should not take their belief in the historicity of a scriptural text to the field with them, with a goal of confirming it. Rare is the scholar or scientist who doesn't begin with a set of questions which they then proceed to prove or disprove. Much of the best science is done that way. It is advantageous that science be pursued this way from many different angles -- faith-promoting, or faith-challenging, or neither. This is how propositions are tested and truth is won.

The secular challenges to Book of Mormon (or for that matter Biblical) historicity does not trouble me as a person of faith because, from a philosophical perspective, many of the foundational events of faith are by definition unique events. You cannot, by definition, find either precedent for or experimental confirmation of the son of God being born in the flesh, crucified, placed in a tomb cold and dead, and then returning to life. Once the angel Moroni has delivered the golden plates to Joseph, the book has been translated, and the plates returned, he will not come back and repeat the performance for skeptical historians. There were historical witnesses of these events, and you can pore over the sources as a way of figuratively cross-examining the witnesses. You can compare their accounts to the accounts of others, both conflicting and confirming. You can compare the story of Jesus Christ to Dionysus or Mithridates or Horus, and draw whatever conclusions you like about about the supposed parallels. But ultimately, accepting (or rejecting) the reality of the event becomes an act of imagination or faith, or whatever you want to call it.

Personally, I have evolved a disposition to accept these miraculous events as literally true, though maybe not in exactly the terms or the way we always imagine them from reading the texts about them. I accept that the accounts may be flawed (certainly, logically they must be, especially when we find contradictions between different canonical versions of the same account). But I am convinced of their fundamental truth (not "truthiness," as Stephen Colbert says, but "truth").

Every community of faith exists as a witness of the foundational events that created it. Judaism is the proof of Mount Sinai. Christianity is the proof of Jesus. Islam is the proof of Mohammed, just as surely as Mormonism is the proof of Joseph Smith. For those of us who live in the generations after Sinai, or Christ, or Mohammed, or Joseph, the events themselves manifest themselves differently to us. We experience their witness by living lives consonant with the truth that was revealed and that others passed on to us. Our experience is in many ways the reverse of those who experienced the miraculous, foundational event. They experienced it, and changed their lives to conform to the new truth revealed in that way. We inherited it, and created belief in the event in response to the life ways they taught us.

But even then, we have to struggle to find our own truth. To a certain extent, we relive the event itself when we receive our own spiritual witnesses of its truthfulness. We can even experience our own new and unique and life-changing miracles. I have.

People will hasten to point out to me that you can't uncritically, literally accept all the tenets of every single religion in the world. That would be insane. I agree. I can't and I don't -- either with respect to the faith I call my own, or with respect to the faith of others. But I take the witnesses of all honest people of faith seriously. And I take seriously the witness that exists in scripture, tradition, and in communal life of all the various religious communities I am acquainted with. I accept all of this as real data about the nature of the reality we live in and about the nature of God and our relationship to him.

I have a tendency to treat each faith more as a discipline than as a field of knowledge per se, as a methodology that can be used to achieve the kind of maturity and insight and love that our humanity demands. And I know that I will not be able to achieve that maturity myself unless I am willing to commit myself -- intellectually, spiritually and physically.

It is a relief to me to put this out in the open. Yes, I believe in the golden plates. I believe Joseph did see Christ and the Father. I believe these things were as real as the keyboard I'm typing on. And to affirm this feels incredibly grounding to me. It makes the reality I experience every day more real to me. The kiss I planted on my husband's lips this morning as he left for work: more real. The vegetarian chili I made for my family last night; the cold walk through the snow to the nearby produce exchange to pick up the ingredients: more real. My understanding that life is much, much more than the things we see on the surface: more real.

Is Something the Matter?

When I am upset about something, dealing with some distressing problem, I've learned that there are a few very important things I need to do before I even begin to address the problem, a checklist I go over and make sure I've completed first:

1. Am I well rested, and have I had a good eight hours of sleep for at least the last 2-3 nights?

2. For the last 2-3 days, have I been eating a healthy, balanced diet and drinking plenty of water?

3. Have I gotten some decent physical exercise in the last 48 hours, walking or calisthenics or bike riding?

4. Have I taken some moment in at least the last 24 hours to tell the various people who are important in my life how thankful I am for them and how much I love them? Have I reminded myself (and God) what I am thankful for?

5. Did I get on my knees this morning and pray to God for guidance? Have I been taking some time each day to pray and read some sacred text and taken some time to meditate on what it means to me, and its relevance to my goals and purpose in life?

If at any point in the checklist I realize I'm missing out in any of these areas -- unless the problem is demanding to be addressed immediately -- I will put off working on it or thinking about it or worrying about it until I have attended to these five other much more pressing matters. Sometimes I make an appointment with myself. Memo to Self: Three days from now, after I've spent a few nights resting well, a few days eating well, getting some exercise, doing something relaxing or fun with my husband -- after those things are taken care of, then come back to it.

Sometimes in my life I have discovered that I can't take care of these basics because I am too busy or too stressed out with work or other commitments. I have gradually over the years come to realize that A) no work and no commitments are worth it if they do not leave me the time to take care of these basic maintenance tasks, OR B) if I attend to the basics first I generally am much better at taking care of work and other commitments in a stress-free, time-efficient manner. First things first.

Once I've prioritized things in my life so that first things come first, things generally run more smoothly. Occasionally things run out of balance again (sometimes for reasons beyond my control!), and then I just need to go down the checklist again. But it's amazing how easily dark and depressing thoughts sneak up on me when I'm hungry or tired or stressed. Amazing how a problem that, on a well-fed, well-rested day seems like a snap will just make me cry when the other stuff is out of sync.

It's not that the problems I face, in themselves, aren't sometimes overwhelming. We've all stood at the foot of an insurmountable summit and felt like we needed to just give up -- and no amount of positive thinking will get us over it.

But isn't that all the more reason I need to be in my right mind, with all the strength at my disposal to face what I need to face?

Let's take care of ourselves, and each other.