© 2024 The Interpreter Foundation. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
All content by The Interpreter Foundation, unless otherwise specified, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.
Interpreter Foundation is not owned, controlled by or affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All research and opinions provided on this site are the sole responsibility of their respective authors, and should not be interpreted as the opinions of the Board, nor as official statements of LDS doctrine, belief or practice.
Pingback: Jacob 7 – David's random ramblings
For those interested, we analyzed this chapter of Adam’s book over at Times and Seasons.
http://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2017/07/future-mormon-chapter-3/
@Ben,
I understand your qualms. I have had them myself. The Joseph Smith inspired translation has helped me quite a bit. Questions about Lot being judged a righteous man yet offering his daughters to a mob instead of his visitors (which did not happen according to the JST). God sending an evil spirit to vex Saul, which did not happen according to the JST. (The evil spirit did happen, but it was not from the Lord.) And the Lord hardening Pharaoh’s heart which did not happen. The Pharaoh hardened his own heart.
The other things which still are there which bother me I will just have to put on my shelf until I can know and understand what did actually happen and whatever reasons there were for it.
Glenn
Vance on 10/28 at 12:00:
That is some very good background and explanation of some possible rationale for what I view as punitive acts of God. It made me pause and wonder if this might make sense. But, the mental gymnastics are still too great for me. Now, I’m trying not to improperly use presentism, but what would YOU do if President Monson said that God told him that we needed to purge all those within our ward boundaries who were drug addicts, cohabitators or gay, AND ALL IN THEIR FAMILIES, etc.? (I group gays there, not because I think they belong, but because some in church leadership think they do.) You need to kill them–shed their blood, lest they contaminate our members and others. Would you do it? No, really, would you? Picture it, the prophet telling us to do that because he claims God said to do it. Could you face the children and shoot them? Don’t let your mind wander back to viewing the OT times and peoples—keep your thoughts here today, where there are houses, streets, people with jobs and lives and people everywhere being civil (generally) and you are going to go kill them in cold blood. Could you rationalize in your mind that you were doing the lesser of two evils, so that made it right? (Of course the key would be to determine if one actually thought God had commanded it.) For me, that is crazy talk. Are the people in OT times any less human than we are today. Didn’t they each have a mother whom they loved? Didn’t the parents love their children as best they could and want them to be happy? So, as I said in an early post: When an uncertain historical record thousands of years old characterizes God in a way that is inconsistent with one’s closely held moral beliefs and rational reasoning, the reader can change their entire understanding of God to fit, or question the accuracy of the record, or shelf the issue for another day. I’ve done a mix of the latter two to quell the dissonance. I don’t think anyone stupid or ignorant who doesn’t see it this way. I’ve talked for hours with intelligent, good members I trust and respect about differences I have and we walk away empathetic, but for the most part unchanged in opinion. That’s OK. I recognize that your opinion isn’t likely to change, but as your explanation has helped me see better your rationale and that there is one, I hope my narrative will at least help you see how my mind works (or doesn’t) ;).
It’s a great question, isn’t it? I somehow don’t think it is really all that hypothetical; at some point we will be commanded to do stuff we really won’t like to do.
Yes, your scenario seems a bit harsh on the surface. But I would hope to be spiritually in tune as to WHY God would command such a thing. He wouldn’t do it for giggles, you know?
Nephi was commanded to kill Laban. That horrified him, yet he did it anyway. Was he wrong to commit murder? No, because the Lord commanded it, and the Lord is the lawgiver. Laban of course wasn’t innocent, but I bet his family, if any, suffered greatly somehow.
Here’s the thing: We believe that Jesus is Jehovah. As mentioned upthread, we believe that God has ordered massive destruction in the past (Flood, the Exodus, heck even the destruction of Israel and the scattering of the tribes was no fun day in the sun).
And we believe that God will order far more destruction in the future: the 2nd Coming is no picnic.
So: God orders all the druggies and their presumably innocent families killed. And I have to pull the trigger. Do I do it? I honestly do not know. That’s a question of faith, isn’t it?
But if I was convinced God wanted me to do it… I hope I would have enough faith. Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Issac, an innocent after all. And we are told we must be tried like Abraham.
If God had not offered Himself a replacement, Abraham would have sacrificed Issac, an innocent. Good or bad? Clearly a good thing, because God commands it. And don’t forget: the entire plan of salvation; our own salvation, depends entirely on God sacrifice of an innocent: Jesus.
If God commanded me, and I knew it was God’s command, to kill the innocent: dare I refuse? This life is designed for us to be like God, and God kills the innocent all the time, or permits them to die. From His perspective, in many ways it may well be a mercy to call the innocent home, or to spare further pain for someone else. Who am I to judge the Lord or His reasons?
No, I would hope that I would follow God’s command: with tears of sorrow like Abraham raising the knife no doubt, but can I refuse a command from God? I don’t know if I have the faith to do it. It would be hard, no doubt. And maybe that would be the test for me and lots of others if we are truly converted to the Lord enough to follow His commands, even if they seem wrong to us. Just like Abraham, who was after all an intended victim of human sacrifice.
I mention here that the Canaanites are not the only genocides commanded by God. The Native Americans– the Aztecs, in particular, were quite clearly removed violently by Cortez. An examination of that campaign clearly demonstrates that God was on the side of Cortez, and of course Columbus’s discovery of America and the new diseases that wiped out 90% of all native people… that was prophesied by Nephi as the hand of the Lord. That was well after Christ’s time.
When Cortez and his troops were sacking Mexico City, and killing people indiscriminately, that was at God’s command, I believe. The Aztecs had forfeited their civilization’s continued existence. And they were swept off by the Lord, using Cortez.
Jacob 5 and the parable of the olive tree mentions how God sometimes cuts down that which “encumbers” the plot of ground that God plants the tree in. And God has commanded to pluck off the bitter branches slowly in this last day. What, exactly, does that mean? And then, of course, the entire vineyard will be burned with fire. The parable of the wheat and the tares: Both are in the church, but the tares will be separated, gathered and destroyed. How? Possibly the wheat will be involved in that destruction?
We members of the church today have been very lucky that we have had peace and safety and no truly dangerous threats that require extreme responses. But that is rare. Your “Kill the gays and their families!” for instance, could be commanded if there was a law requiring us to turn over our temples and property and lives to the gays in our midst; in short giving them control over God’s kingdom on earth. At that point, God may well command something like that to prevent the corruption of His church and gospel. Likely? No, but in that kind of scenario, it would make sense. Captain Moroni had lots of maybe good people who were Kingmen slain because they did not swear the oath. Was that wrong? In that scenario, it was the right thing to do.
I’m pretty sure that your extreme scenario would not happen without an extreme need. But if it didn’t and nevertheless the command came? Well, I would, no doubt, be put to death by the State for my crime. But I would be honored by God for listening to Him. I also hope I never have to face such a choice.
What about you: if God commanded you to kill that druggie and his innocent family, and you knew it was from God: would you do it? That’s a personal question for you, is it not? Yet God tries us on our most weak points; and we pass or fail. Jesus said at one point we would have to beat our plows into swords; and when that day comes we very well may have to do things we don’t want to do or think are atrocities. It will not be fun, no question about that.
This hypothetical is pretty good. However, God’s command to the Israelites in Joshua also appears to be based on nationality or religious distinction. Perhaps a more accurate parallel, and a very appropriate hypothetical for our time, would be if President Monson said that we need to go kill all the Muslims or something along those lines.
For myself, as soon as the above order or anything similar came down, I would be convinced that I was not interested in affiliating with this God. Trust would be broken, and if I’d received the order from directly from an angel or a god in broad daylight, I would assume that something was screwed up, meaning either myself and my perception of reality or the God/angel/prophet/holy ghost/etc. Humans are never justified in genocide. Period.
If God commands us to do something terribly wrong, we don’t pass that moral test by putting obedience above our fundamental moral sense. We would do better to be strong and independent enough to defy an absolute atrocity.
Ben, I sincerely applaud your sense of moral values. However, I would ask if you ever have been in a meeting with God? Until one does that, he or she can only speak of what they would do based upon their current set of beliefs and convictions.
In order to understand God, we would need to experience the full depth and breadth of His experiences, which we cannot do.
In order to understand Joshua, we would have to experience a similar breadth and depth of his experiences, cultural, spiritual, prophetic, including his interactions with God and angels.
The same goes for Joseph Smith. And Nephi.
Until we have those experiences, we cannot say what we would do if confronted with a similar situation. We can only say what we think we would do.
Glenn
Glenn, you’re right that I am limited by my experience.
That being said, I will admit to having had a vision of God and having had many other revelatory experiences. Interestingly, these experiences have not led me to have unwavering confidence in the current scriptures or institution, but instead have helped me to more clearly see how are assumptions and worldview deeply affect these experiences. Acting on them has also led me to understand how much license God gives us. Similar to how God acts in Book of Mormon stories, like when Nephi broke his bow or when the the brother of Jared was given the task of figuring out lighting, I understand that God points us in the right direction and gives us space to follow our moral sense and best judgement. That space also allows me to question claims that God commanded such and such horrible thing.
The other thing I’d add, is that similar to the common recommendation we give to youth to decide they’ll keep the law of chastity or word of wisdom before they are confronted with difficult decisions, I can very well plan my own response to what I see as a moral question.
This is interesting. There’s an article published on Interpreter a while ago about Job. Job was, bluntly, treated rather horribly by the Lord. A faithful man, clearly the most faithful and righteous in the land. The Lord was directly responsible for him losing everything: family, land, prestige, wealth, health: the book of Job makes it clear that Job suffered more than almost anyone could and not die.
Why? Why did the Lord do this to Job? The beginning basically suggests that God and Satan decided to play games with Job’s life. That’s not… Godlike, is it?
For that matter, Joseph Smith suffered a great deal, including giving his own life. Yet he had a revelation stating that God would preserve his life until God was ready for Joseph Smith to die. So, when Joseph was killed… whose fault was it? The Mob? Certainly. But was it not also God’s fault; for removing His protection?
I strongly suggest reading that article about Job. It comes to the conclusion that God tests all of us, and that bad things will happen to us all; and perhaps paradoxically, the more innocent we are, the more God will inflict upon us. This is true most of all with Jesus: Jesus prayed for that cup to be removed. Yet it was not. And no one was more innocent than Him.
If you refuse to believe in a God that would command terrible things to be inflicted upon the innocent; then apparently you refuse to believe in the God of the Bible, or of Joseph Smith. The Saints were driven across the plains, while their persecutors got Nauvoo. Terribly, terribly unfair. The Handcart pioneers: Brutal pain and suffering upon the humble followers of God, many of whom died along the way. And yet we must acknowledge that God commanded it.
If God is willing to inflict such pain and torment upon His own people: Why would He refuse to order a punitive event against wicked societies?
In all seriousness, I do not see how any honest conception of God that does not include God inflicting great pain and suffering upon the innocent (including death!), let alone the wicked, can possibly comport with the scriptures.
God can and does command people to do things that are “terribly wrong” from our point of view. He does things Himself that are “terribly wrong.” The torment of Job is just one of many.
Evil exists in the world, and not all of it comes from Satan. At least, not all of what we would call evil comes from Satan. Some suffering comes from the natural world, some from Satan, and some is explicitly commanded by God.
It appears you reject the scriptures in favor of being a prophet yourself (at least from your own description), but I have not heard your reason for the existence of suffering then. Why does God allow the innocent to suffer, when He could stop it?
What about Ammon? Ammon slew several people with his sling and one with the sword. Did God command him to do that? Did Ammon commit sin by slaying those people? When God struck the person dead who was about to kill Ammon, did God sin? What if Ammon had woken and slain that man– a sin? When the prison walls fell upon the Ammonihahites and freed Alma and Amulek, slaying all others inside the prison including other prisoners: good or bad?
In fact, what about Ammonihah? Alma was sent to preach repentance, converted a few, watched as many of his followers were burned alive; escaped the town, and then the Lamanites came and genocided the place. Slew everyone there: women, children, men. Even animals, I believe. Was that at God’s command? Clearly so, as Alma carefully followed the Biblical law prescriptions to destroy an apostate city.
Was God justified in destroying Ammonihah? If so, then what if it had been an army led by Alma instead of wicked Amulonites? Would it have made a difference?
I submit that God knows more than us, and His reasons are always fair, if obscure to us. Job was being tested, and it took him from his “good” state to “being like God” state. Joseph Smith’s misery in liberty jail was totally unjustified, for he had been a faithful servant. Yet it was for Josephs benefit. The handcart pioneers–those that survived — rebuked those who criticized the Church for that mission; saying that they found God in that extreme suffering; and would not trade it for the world.
Even the Holocaust of World War II led directly to the Jews returning to the Holy Land; a major step in the Restoration. Would that have happened without the Holocaust? I don’t know. No one knows but God.
If we judge God’s motives and refuse His commands because we disagree from our short sighted mortal vision; well, that seems perilous, to say the least. It’s like an Egyptian farmer blaming God for his crop loss and the loss of his firstborn as part of the Exodus. God’s fault? Absolutely! Suffering, pain, inflicted upon this farmer? You bet!
Was it evil? Was it cruel? Was it immoral? If you ask the farmer, probably so. Ask an Israelite? It depends–many wanted to go back to the fleshpots. Looking back through time? Clearly, God knew what He was doing and that suffering and pain and heartache inflicted on the Egyptian farmers was dwarfed by the good that came from the Exodus. God has been vindicated by History–it’s as if He knew what He was doing. I do not want to decide whether I will obey God’s commandments based on my judgment of whether they are good or not. He knows more than me, you know?
Vance, I should clarify a couple points.
First, I did not mention my revelatory experiences in an effort to claim any kind of authority. In other words, I’m not claiming to be a prophet as you suggested. I apologize if it seemed like I was making a claim at revelatory authority. I was asked about my experience with God, and I took the opportunity to illustrate how my personal experience with revelation has helped me to see how God’s original message or role might not always be accurately communicated in the scriptures. Like I stated above, this disconnect could be created by the latitude God gives to us in doing his work and/or by the flawed cultural framework that scriptural figures exist in (I’m not making a special case for their culture. Instead, I’m suggesting that all cultures are flawed.).
Second, I’m not arguing that God never allows terrible things to happen to righteous or wicked people. Really, the only issue I’m taking a hard line on is the Canaanite extermination. This particular account is set apart from Job and Ammonihah in that we have God commanding human beings to kill other human beings, including women and children, and not in self defense or protecting one’s family. In my mind, this is very different from God using a wicked Lamanite army to level Ammonihah or allowing Job to be inflicted by disasters and diseases. In these other instances, adversity is felt, but God is not asking that his adherents voluntarily seek out an act of genocide. In the Book of Mormon, that kind of behavior is specifically denounced, even when the intended victims were the Gadianton robbers.
I guess this is where we definitely part ways. I will decide on whether I will obey any given commandment based on whether I think it’s good or bad because that is an important way I decide who to follow and how to act. Elder Scott once taught that the Spirit was sometimes difficult to discern to specifically hone our ability to choose between right and wrong. To be clear, the only commandment I’ve denounced is the one to go exterminate a group of people. I’m calling that one bad.
Karl S.,
Presentism is sneaking in, despite your desire not to have it do so. In ancient Israel, the people typically lived under theocracies. When the prophet spoke, the political leader was typically entirely on board. They spoke (religious and political) as one, and when they did not, the people did what the political leader said, not what the religious leader said.
Fast forward to today. We don’t live in a theocracy and, in fact, civil and religious spheres are quite separate. We live in a time when we “render under Caesar,” and so forth.
It is quite inconceivable under our current societal structure that the prophet would command within a civil sphere–in fact, it is contrary to our doctrines which state that the maximum punishment for disobedience to religious law (doctrine, if you will) is deprivation of association (excommunication), not anything else.
It is very conceivable under our current societal structure that the political leader would command that harm be done to others. We call that war. We call that “mobilizing the National Guard.” We call that imprisoning others. We call that the death penalty. (You get the point, I’m sure.)
Even in ancient Israel, it was the political leaders who commanded armies and police forces. Sometimes, under theocratic rule, the prophet and the political leader were the same, but it was *still* the political leader who commanded the armies.
I’m surprised no one mentioned the account in Acts 5 -Ananias and Sapphira lie to the Lord and lose their lives. Seems rather “Old testament”. Perhaps, we don’t really understand God. Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. Sherem lied to God. Not a good idea.
Not that I’m taking historicity of the the Ananias and Sapphira account for granted, but if I were, there would still be a huge difference between Sherem, Ananias, and Sapphira dropping dead, and God commanding the physical slaughter of a group of human beings, including children, in a take-no-prisoner style extermination. I think it’s fair to raise questions about Sherem, Ananias, Sapphira, and others with deaths attributed to God, but when we start talking about a commanded extermination event, which ended up being a huge point of debate in these comments, the ethical issues raised are just so strong. Why not a miraculous destruction? Why have covenant holding and righteous individuals go kill children?
I should clarify that I don’t think a Canaanite extermination necessarily took place. There isn’t evidence to back it up. If there had been, I wouldn’t attribute it to God, nor would I think there would be justification for it, and if you do attribute it to God, then I think my two questions from the comment above need to be addressed.
The Canaanite extermination, though commanded, did not take place, as the book of Judges makes abundantly clear. And Israel suffered mightily for it. Many more souls were lost due to Canaanite corruption, temptation and wickedness for hundreds of years than had the people of Israel done what they were told and just cauterized the wound, as it were.
As to your two questions: 1) Outside of a volcanic eruption or meteor, it’s hard to picture any sort of divine destruction that would get everyone, and yet be confined to a small geographic area. Any disease sufficient to wipe them out would of necessity have been extremely lethal and contagious, with the almost certainty of spreading outside of Canaan. And there’s no volcanoes in Israel. We see that the Lord’s mighty destruction of the Nephites at the time of His death… did not kill them all off. It took a human army to do that.
2) Why kill the children? I would take issue with the idea that the invading children of Israel were “covenant holding and righteous.” These were the same people who had just spent 40 years in the wilderness because they couldn’t obey God. Who built a golden calf. Who were so weak willed that Joshua and Caleb had to hold up Moses arms in battle.
The Lord offered them the higher law, remember, and they rejected it in favor of the Law of Moses. That’s a much harsher law. And it included slavery. Any children spared by the Israelites would have been slaves for life. They would have been traumatized beyond belief. Perhaps the Lord was being merciful in some way by calling them home immediately. As to the impact on the Israelites of killing children: Life was cheap, blood sacrifice was universally practiced, and the Israelites had just gone through the Passover, where the Lord slew all the firstborn males in Egypt. They would just be thankful it wasn’t them being killed this time.
I suspect, actually, that the Lord’s treatment of Egypt in that entire drama is related to your real question. The average, everyday Egyptian certainly seems like they got the short end of the stick in the fight between Pharaoh, Moses, and the Lord. Their crops were destroyed, their water supply ruined, their firstborn son killed, and so forth.
The key here, I think, is in Mosiah, the last chapter. There, the King asked if the people were willing to be responsible for their own sins and not have the king bear it.
In many ways, the Lord was working on the principles of collective responsibility in the Old Testament. What one man did in the community directly impacted whether the whole community was punished, especially if that one man was the leader or king. How many times was Israel collectively punished for the acts of one or a few people? Lots.
It worked in reverse, too: The Lord would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah if but ten righteous people were there. Those wicked would have escaped punishment based only on a few people. And in the Book of Mormon I believe it is Samuel the Laminate who mentions the fact that it was only the few righteous among them that was staying the Lord’s hand at that very moment.
Today, we look at salvation from an individual perspective, mostly. Did Bobby deserve that? Yes or no. Collective punishment/reward is usually not discussed. Yet the Lord does. It’s not fair that the innocent child suffers because of the abuse of his parents. Or that when the flood washed away the wicked town it also swept the church away too. But it’s also not fair that those wicked town people were not punished because the Lord was sparing the few righteous. Sometimes the Lord metes out collective punishment, and sometimes He spares punishment of the wicked because of the righteous. God is a god of justice… but also a god of Mercy. And sometimes we want justice, and sometimes we want mercy.
Rest assured: Those innocent Canaanite children, to the extent they were innocent, would have been taken care of in the fullness of time. The sin of their death would have fallen on their wicked parents who were the reason God was provoked enough to anger to destroy their civilization.
Steve, great point about Ananias and Sapphira. Trying to psychoanalyze Jacob is risky enough, but we truly do not know the Lord’s mind or heart. His ways clearly are not our ways. And it is we who are the fools, not God, any apparent evidence to the contrary.
Brilliant analysis and a true “deep reading” of both the text and Miller’s interpretation. I found this enlightening, an astute dismantling of a potentially harmful reading of Restoration scripture. This is scholarship at its best, used to bring to light assumptions and expose faulty reasoning in the service of truth and faith. Thanks!
Vance, at 9:05am,
Thanks for the thoughtful and thorough response. You make a good case. However, it hasn’t sufficiently swayed me from my previous feelings. When an uncertain historical record thousands of years old characterizes God in a way that is inconsistent with one’s closely held moral beliefs and rational reasoning, the person can change their entire understanding of God to fit, or question the accuracy of the record, or shelf the issue for another day. I’ve done a mix of the latter two to quell the dissonance. Also, just because Nephi was reiterating something from the Brass Plates that occurred 1500 years earlier and could have been very inaccurate by then (600 BC), doesn’t mean he had any more intel on its accuracy than just to assume it was good.
For all the harshness here against Miller’s approach in his essay on Jacob, I don’t think there is a convincing rebuttal to the a key observation in his essay: Jacob told Sherem that a sign would NOT change him and bring him to repentance, but the sign God did give most clearly DID change Sherem. Sherem repented and his witness then brought many souls to Christ.
Yes, it was a different kind of sign than Sherem wanted, and yes, it was a sign from God given under direction of the Spirit, as the author points out, but it certainly was a sign. For someone who was completely of the devil, utterly insincere, beyond hope of repentance, he responded quite well. Is it unwarranted of Miller to wonder if this was a surprise to Jacob, who then began to more fully see the possibility of change among his enemies, the Lamanites? Whether his analysis is off or not, the tone of his essay is not one of tearing down the prophets but of showing us something more about the doctrine of Christ and how it can help us move past the limitations of the lenses we use to view others. He may be wrong in some of his readings and assumptions, but this essay in particular is not one that should weaken anybody’s faith.
In the comments above, Miller is condemned for bogus psychoanalysis and tearing down a prophet, when to me it seems he is seeking to understand who the prophet was and what kind of lens he used in viewing others. Every prophet and every writer has a lens. Faithful LDS commentators have taken somewhat related approaches to understand the attitude of Nephite writers toward the Lamanites or to understand the views and actions of other prophets. I think Miller deserves more thoughtful consideration, particularly in the essay on Jacob, though I also disagree with a number of his positions in Future Mormon.
I will leave to others the persuasiveness or not of, and the implications surrounding, the “sign” given Sherem by God. And I will accept your suggestion that Miller’s attempted psychoanalysis of Jacob is with good intent (even though it casts Jacob in a less than favorable light). This nevertheless does not ameliorate the monumental problem connected to such an endeavor. Miller thinks he can, centuries later, in a different culture and with an utterly incomplete record (as it regards Jacob’s mental makeup), determine that he can psychoanalyze Jacob and use that as the explanation for Jacob’s behavior, as set forth in Jacob 7. It can’t be done; it is incomplete and in its incompleteness unfair. It is akin to those historians who think they can diagnose Joseph Smith as schizophrenic based upon some journal entries and third person accounts and state that this schizophrenia explains Joseph’s spiritual experiences. I do not need Jacob to be perfect to make sense of the Book of Mormon, and if someone wants to point out things that establish the imperfectness of a prophet, well, so be it. But I do take issues with someone who wants to do it in what I consider to be an unfair and unprofessional way.
Thanks for this. Though I’ve been a fan of Miller’s work in the past, I had lots of problems with many of the essays and conclusions in Future Mormon. This validates a lot of my concerns.
I have always been surprised at the person who feels capable of psychoanalyzing someone else who is removed spatially, culturally, and temporally. And with Jacob, such analysis is based on an altogether incomplete record. If a professional would not do such a thing for fear of malpractice, why the literary critic? In the end, it says more about the person who is willing to go down that path than the one being “analyzed.”
The moment I read Lindsay’s review of the Miller chapter, calling it a deeper reading of the text, I thought such a conclusion wrong. Thanks for taking the time to dissect and expose the fallacy.
Duane
Well done. Jacob could not defend himself against Miller’s attempted identity theft, but you did an exemplary job.
Duane this was a well done rebuttal to a form of poorly conceived commentary. I remember the first time I ran into such high brow analysis was a piece written by Joe Spencer in a blog referenced as Feast Upon the Word at this link https://feastuponthewordblog.org/2012/01/01/book-of-mormon-lesson-2-all-things-according-to-his-will-1-nephi-1-7-sunday-school/ . In this piece he attempts to paint Nephi’s slaying of Laban as a manifestation of some latent desire boiling over inside to slay his brothers Laman and Lemuel. In retains a similar feel to the piece of Miller’s of an overt effort to psycho-analyze and undermines the value of the scriptural source. Perhaps someday you may wish to acquaint yourself with what seems one of the earliest forms of a burgeoning effort to remake Book of Mormon prophets into children of a lessor God.
Duane Boyce has carefully and fully exposed Adam Milller’s remarkably confused slanted treatment of Sherem provided by Jacob in the Book of Mormon. It is clearly a mistake to think that by borrowing “insights” from mushy contemporary philosophy we can correct and improve on our scriptures by doing theology. It turns out that what MIller lacks in clarity, which seems like something profound and insightful to some, also involves gargled readings of the Book of Mormon by seeking to employ tenuous explanations borrowed by secular sources.
Brother Duane, Thanks for articulating something that has been circulating in my brain for some time now. It has been given a voice.
While I agree that Sherem’s sincerity in regards to the law is suspect, he is clearly sincere about his belief that prophecies and teachings about Christ were fictions. In a way, he loosely parallels Paul. The text states the he “labored diligently, and notably, this word pair is used 8 other times in the Book of Mormon text, which all describe sincere Gospel ministering.
I think this article rightly points out that some of Jacob actions essentially represent God, and that the text portrays God taking Sherem’s life. That being the case, I think it is fair for us to ask if we are comfortable with a God who takes the life of someone who is diligently laboring for what they believe in, considering Sherem, from the information we are given, is only preaching. Becaus we have been on the receiving end of punitive treatment for our beliefs, Mormons, of all people, should think twice when we hear about someone being punished for promoting their beliefs, even if they are contrary to ours.
This is where the question of Christ-like behavior becomes most pronounced. Do we believe that Christ killed this man? The Christ we learn about in the New Testament condemns institutional wickedness and sins, but doesn’t suggest force as a way of promoting his teachings. Instead, he gives his own life to demonstrate truth.
Ben, If you will recall from the article and from the Book of Mormon text itself that Sherem knew the scriptures but yet denied the doctrine of the Christ. Joseph essentially called Sherem a liar when he told Sherem that he demanded a “sign in the thing which thou knowest to be true.” On his deathbed confession he said that he had lied to the Lord “for I denied the Christ, and said that I believed the scriptures; and they truly testify of him.”
That is what the text and Sherem himself tells us. He did blame his deception on the devil though.
Whatever you may believe or wish to believe, I would suspect that God knew Sherem’s heart and motives as to why he (Sherem) was working so diligently.
Glenn
That’s a good point about his deception, saying he believed the scriptures while knowing that they taught of Christ. Whatever his motives were, I think, from our modern perspective (post-globalization), Sherem lying about his belief in the scriptures and preaching towards whatever end he was working towards, which from the text seems to be to preach his disbelief in Christ, doesn’t merit death. While we can’t judge Jacob by modern standards, we can certainly judge the portrayal of God in the text. Sherem’s end is just so Old Testament like, which vengeful God we often chalk up to Israelite propaganda and culture as he doesn’t completely fit our Christian golden rule conception.
So you don’t think God killed Sherem? I guess if you want to believe the text is lying about that, it’s your right. But I think it’s pretty safe to say that Jacob wasn’t the one doing the killing.
The text claims it is God, but we have license to question the narrator. I might ask if the events are reported accurately or if they accurately portray God’s role, for example. I never meant to suggest that Jacob was killing anyone. I just meant that Jacob’s report of God killing Sherem creates a portrayal of God we might not be entirely comfortable with.
The idea that the Old Testament and New Testament have opposing portrayals of God is in itself an imposition on the text. It’s certainly not LDS doctrine (or the perspective of the Book of Mormon) that one portrayal of God is “Israelite propaganda”, nor does the New Testament or the Book of Mormon fit the very selective image of Christ popular in modern Western culture.
It’s the Old Testament that first says “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18), and it’s Jesus who talks of people being cast into hell (Matthew 18:8-9 et al), who quotes Micah approvingly as the words of “the Father” that he will “execute vengeance and fury upon” those who will not repent and come to Christ (3 Nephi 21:21), not to mention what Christ promises to do in Revelation and the Doctrine and Covenants.
If scripture doesn’t fit “our… conception”, and makes us uncomfortable, we should at the least consider that it’s not scripture that is wrong.
Some of the Old Testament definitely portrays a God that Mormons don’t believe in. A good example is the book of Joshua’s account of God’s sanctioned extermination of the Canaanites. A lot of Latter Day Saints raise their eyebrows at God’s command to kill men, women and children. As it turns out, historical evidence doesn’t support the account of violent take over, which gives further justification to any who question that callous version of God.
You say if scripture makes us uncomfortable or doesn’t fit our conception we should “at the least” consider that it isn’t the scripture that’s wrong. I agree, but this is the default mode by which we approach scripture. The typical Latter Day Saint reaction is to make our beliefs and opinions align to scripture. I’m suggesting that we break from the norm by at least considering the possibility that the account of God in Jacob 7 could be flawed.
“Some of the Old Testament definitely portrays a God that Mormons don’t believe in.”
Really?
Just because *you* don’t believe that, doesn’t mean you get to speak for what “Mormons” believe categorically”.
Nephi himself, of course, discusses the invasion of Canaan in 1 Nephi 17.
You seem to have no other basis for rejecting scriptural authority and the account of Jacob 7 other the fact that you disagree with it. The author’s footnote above is relevant: “In discussing Jacob, I, like Miller, am assuming an audience that accepts the canonicity and spiritual authority of the Book of Mormon and other Standard Works. Those who do not are an audience for another occasion.”
I think you are mistaken. God is not, clearly, a wimpy “I love everyone and would never execute judgment on them!” person, despite modern ideas.
God did send the flood, after all. As for the killing of the Canaanites: 1, we don’t have the full story, and 2, what we do know suggests that there was very good reasons for the extermination. Consider this: at one point, the Canaanites had the truth and the church, we are told. They were very, very clearly apostate by the time Joshua showed up. So God was punishing an apostate group, just as Ammonihah was destroyed, and just like He allowed the Nephites to be destroyed at the end of the Book of Mormon: they had known the truth and rejected it.
Second, God commanded it because if they were left alone, their perverted worship would destroy the Israelites. Which, in fact, is what happened: the worship of the Jews was corrupted by the Baal worship of the Canaanites.
God is a God of law and justice. When people reject the opportunity for mercy, there really is nothing left to prevent justice from being executed upon them.
Consider the line from the Olive Tree parable, where God cut down the fruit that occupied the one piece of land so He could plant a branch there. That fruit or tree that was removed was the Jaredite civilization, and it was removed rather violently. And yet they deserved it. God is just, believe it or not. And sometimes, people and civilizations get what they deserve, instead of getting mercy. We should have no problem with that.
I don’t need to appeal to an “I love everyone and would never execute judgment on them!” version of God to justify claiming that God did not order the extermination of all men, women and children in Canaan. If we can’t agree that the God we worship wouldn’t do that, then I don’t think we’ll find enough common ground to have a productive conversation on this topic.
Vance’s comments are quite correct. And this is not just a once off. You don’t just have the invasion of Canaan, there’s the Exodus from Egypt, there’s the flood, there’s the Cataclysm preceding Christ’s appearance in the Americas. The Book of Mormon is in perfect accord with the Bible that God has at times orchestrated widespread destruction. And the Doctrine and Covenants states he will do it again (“And the anger of the Lord is kindled, and his sword is bathed in heaven, and it shall fall upon the inhabitants of the earth” D&C 1:13 et al).
To argue that God would *never* do such things is draw some a priori idea of what God would or would not do from somewhere, but certainly not the LDS scriptures.
I would add that the Book of Moses states that God has, by the power of His word, caused entire worlds to pass away–and I presume that at least some of those worlds were inhabited at the time of their demise.
While murder is wrong for us, God is in a different boat. He gave us life, and He can remove us from it. Since we are eternal spirits, all God is doing is moving us back to the world of spirits and ending our test–early, as it were. And in judgment, that early ending will no doubt be taken into account. In the case of the Canaanites–or the Nephites at the end of the Book of Mormon– those few, righteous souls who are caught up in the generalized destruction and perish will still be rewarded. The no doubt many righteous saints who perished in Nephite lands at the time of Christ’s crucifixion well be compensated.
Any conception of God that does not allow for Him to cause widespread destruction; whether by His own hand (via nature, like volcano, flood, disease or the like) or via His own people, such as Joshua that we know of –any such conception does not comport to scripture.
God, we are told, will destroy the earth with fire in a not too distant time. I imagine many righteous will not survive it, along with a whole heaping helping of wicked people. We long and pray for that day of destruction, do we not? For Christ to come and cleanse the earth? Are we not praying for the Lord to destroy the wickedness? He is not going to come down and appear on Maury Povich and ask people to repent if they can find the time. No, He will come with thunderings, lightnings, great winds, fire, and destruction. The elements will melt with fervent heat… and I’m sure that the resulting lava rock will not be a day at the spa. Indeed, the destruction will be so great that the Lord will lift up the righteous to meet Him, while the world burns below.
If that is what we are praying for; for the world to end in fire at the hands of the Lord with the concurrent extermination of the wicked on earth… then why is anyone shocked that the Lord would have ordered Joshua to sweep away a very wicked group of people before? Why would the Lord leave them alone is a more pertinent question. He has orchestrated the fall of many civilizations and the deaths of billions when their wickedness grew too great–Aztec, Roman, Egyptian, Persian, Babylonian, Nazi Germany (a quick demise), the Soviet Union, and, it appears, America is in that same process today, unfortunately.
Vance, you stated, “God is a God of law and justice. When people reject the opportunity for mercy, there really is nothing left to prevent justice from being executed upon them.” I wonder how Canaanite innocent mothers and children “rejected the opportunity for mercy”. I’ve found that when I can no longer defend the indefensible I need to change my assumptions.
KarlS:
I know this because of 1 Nephi 17: 33-35, where Nephi explicitly states that the people (the Canaanites) had rejected the word of God and were ripe in iniquity. I presume that includes the women as well as the men. After all, the primary issue that afflicted the Israelites as a consequence of not destroying the Canaanites was sexual sin and worshipping hedonistic, and female, Canaanite gods and goddesses. Presumably the worship of the goddesses was a female thing. In any case, Nephi tells us pretty straightforward that the Canaanites had had an opportunity to repent and had rejected it and were ripe in Iniquity… and thus God executed judgment on them.
I struggle to see how God could destroy a wicked nation without some innocents necessarily getting caught up in the process, short of sending down an angelic army to do a “Duck duck goose” scenario. Of necessity, the weapons of destruction–be it disease, famine, natural disaster, or war — are not able to be targeted specifically enough to target only the wicked.
Still, the Lord did command that all the Canaanites be slain. What about the innocent children? I submit that there were very few innocent wives or mothers; the entire nation was ripe with iniquity and they had rejected the Lord. There simply wouldn’t have been many innocent wives around (I actually suspect that like Ammonihah, what innocent women were there had been driven off or eliminated; part of their ripening in iniquity).
But for the children: Was it not better for them to be slain and go to heaven rather than be raised in an environment certain to cause them to sin? The Lord destroys wicked nations when they become so wicked that the next generation will not get a chance to be good, much like the flood.
The other option of sparing only the children and taking them into the Israelite home with the intent of converting them/raising them up to the Lord also seems problematic. Outside of very young children, most of them would not warm up to a family that killed their parents. They would have been lost, afraid, probably slaves, and grow up with a towering hatred towards the Israelites. A thorn in the bosom, as it were. And indeed, that is exactly what happened, for the Israelites did not follow God’s commandments, and they were troubled by the Canaanites and apostatized frequently–all through the book of Judges; all through the Kings, until Egypt and the Assyrians and Babylon started messing around.
They did not do what God commanded, and many, many generations of God’s children suffered because of it. Would not it have been better for them to have fully followed God’s commandment to erase the Canaanites root and branch (as a divine punishment for rejecting the Lord mind you, not some innocent nation that had never heard of the Lord), rather than sentence generations of their descendants to apostasy and sin?
My mistake. I just thought most of us would at least agree that God wouldn’t give an extermination order for children, but you have definitely forced me to add a qualifier.
So, correction to my prior comments: Some Mormons aren’t comfortable with the idea that God would order the killing of all children in a given geographical area.
As far as Jacob 7 goes, we can certainly agree to disagree.
I think this is an important discussion to be had, because one of the most common Atheist attacks on God is the same thing you are using: no “True God” would ever order the death or genocide of an entire group of people. Since the Bible says God did it, there must be no God.
You say that the Bible is wrong and God didn’t order it (or it was attributed, wrongly, to God). It is a similar argument to the Atheist attack on God, really.
So I think it’s an important one to discuss. I think an analogy here is appropriate:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: good or bad? Would a just, righteous nation have dropped the atomic bomb? Would God, in fact, have dropped the bomb? I submit that He would have. I submit that, in fact, atomic technology was allowed to be developed by the US primarily for that purpose: to drop on the Japanese.
Those bombs, the ending of the war, and the subsequent occupation of Japan by the US “destroyed” the Japanese. Their militaristic, racist, warmongering culture was destroyed and in a sense, their nation ended. It was rebuilt into a different country. Japan of today is clearly a far, far better place than 1930’s Japan. They would never do the “rape of Nanking” today.
The atomic bomb was a terrible thing that brought about good. It was an act of mercy, really: it saved Japan from invasion and likely national and ethnic suicide, it saved millions of US, British, Australian lives, and many other good things.
It’s also led to millions of people who blame the US for nuking “innocents”, and calling the US evil and a monster. Just like the argument against God for the Canaanite attack.
In particular, your argument about God not removing innocent children in Canaan strikes me as a bit off. This was a time in the world’s history where children died more often than not. Most of the killed children would have died anyway–disease, sacrificed to Molech, etc.
Further, by dying before the age of accountability, they are guaranteed salvation. If the population must be cleansed, I have less of a problem with the children going to a guaranteed reward than with those who lose any chance for repentance.
When the Canaanites forfeited their chance to remain on the earth, and justice demanded they be removed; it is not the children we should mourn; for they are guaranteed heaven. It is those who did not repent and were cut down in the depths of evil and are forever lost that we should sorrow for. Yet in the end, they were judged and had reached the end of God’s grace.
I am sure they were warned, many times. Yet they failed to repent. Nineveh was warned and did repent and were spared. Jerusalem was warned and called to repentance and did not, and the Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem and carried them captive. Do we say that was an act of unjust God? When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, and the people there became cannibals…. was that the act of an unjust God?
If the Israelites would have followed through and removed all the Canaanites, their history would have been far more peaceful. How many millions of Israelites fell into apostasy due to Canaanite seductive theology and apostasy? How much misery and heartache followed? If they had just cauterized the would completely as God commanded, they would have been far better off.
Just as the slaying of Laban would appear to be wrong at first glance, God with His greater view and knowledge knew that it was necessary, and a great good, and besides: Laban had forfeited his life via his actions. Nephi was just the agent of the Lord in executing justice. Any injustice inflicted on the Canaanite children would be tacked to their parents case; for it was the parents that ruined it all and required God to remove their civilization. That is the parent’s fault, and that is why any blame for the death of their children is on their heads, not God’s.
For all:
Please be cautious about involving too much of our own assumptions and culture onto the past. God has pretty much told us that we don’t have the tools to judge him–either for right or wrong. We need to understand as best we are able.
In the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I’m sure that those residents felt quite differently about the moral justification of the bombing that you have suggested. I would be hesitant to suggest that God inherently sides against the Japanese. Similarly, I suppose that those responsible for 9/11 thought that God was on their side–even though we would certainly disagree.
Perhaps it is best if we do our best to understand and not suggest that we happen to know what God is thinking at any given point in time.
I appreciate your comments and the discussion they’ve engendered! I just want to add one thought. We as humans should never kill (I’ll leave aside the rare exceptions) but I don’t think that means we can thus assume that God should never kill, and doubt scriptures that say he does. In fact, almost all the death that occurs in the world is God’s own fault; disease, cancer, aging, car accidents, lightning strikes, food poisoning, heart attacks–they’re all part of his world and he could have intervened to stop any of them. It is unusual for a person’s death to be so clearly attributable to God’s will as it was in Sherem’s case, but really all deaths are God’s will. So, to me, it doesn’t make sense to say that Christ surely wouldn’t kill people; he does it all the time. Death comes for us all and is part of the plan; it’s not our business as mortals to decide who dies when, but surely it is God’s business.
Again, thanks for your comment, even though I didn’t ultimately agree. It gave me a lot to think about.
Ryan Dahle’s comment about tearing down the prophets to make them human so that we common peasants feel like we too have hope is interesting.
That’s what J. Golden Kimball is claimed to have said at one point, or words to that effect: that if he can make it, so can anyone else.
And honestly, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if his life was that example for all of us. The Lord carefully put some colorful people in the Church; at a time when it wouldn’t be disastrous for many. Can you imagine if J. Golden Kimball or Porter Rockwell, or heck, even Brigham Young were the prophet today, with the news, internet, etc? It would be a disaster. Yet we still need those men when we need them. I am glad the Lord is in charge and not I.
Thank you. Very well said. After having thought about this, do you see this becoming a problem? “Insights” discovered through unconventional “deep” readings explained by the same theory that revealed them. Or similar. Any others to mention?
I have generally been concerned by the increasing trend to reinterpret prophetic figures as gray characters (to use a dramatic trope). I feel Joseph Smith’s statement is generally applicable to such approaches: “Although I do wrong, I do not the wrongs that I am charged with doing.”
I’m sure that Jacob did have character flaws and that he was at times less than perfectly Christ-like, but as Duane has amply demonstrated, the text hardly lends itself to determining what those flaws might have been.
Moreover, there is a degree of spiritual danger in becoming too intent on exposing the supposed faults and assumed weaknesses of prophets. Some feel that bringing prophets down of their towers and re-envisioning their lives and characters in more human and fallible terms is refreshing. They then can have hope that like the prophet, they too can do great things for the Lord, despite their own personal weaknesses.
While there may be merit in recognizing that prophetic levels of righteousness and spirituality are within the grasp of every individual, I believe it is generally more helpful to try to rise up to an ideal perception of prophetic righteousness than tear prophets down to our level of mortal weakness.
If we can’t be sure of prophetic wrongdoing or error (meaning when it is not self-admitted or textually or historically obvious) it is simply better not to disseminate negative reinterpretations. There is certainly some gray area, and some suppositions of error are far more benign than others, but for the most part we should cease to find (or search or assume) fault. Prophetic figures have enough critics as it is, without us nitpicking their lives with psychoanalytical theories that are typically not even suitable for the task.
Thanks Duane for your insightful analysis. I assume Adam Miller’s initial interpretation was in good faith and that eventually all of our differing opinions will be reconciled in Christ.
I don’t know who Adam Miller is, nor for that matter what he wrote in “Future Mormon”, but I can say that I am very impressed with the analytical dissection by Duane Boyce of the misinterpretation by Miller of what he (Miller) felt was this “un-Christlike behavior” manifested by Jacob towards Sherem, and all the other faulty reasoning and justification to support his assertions. Go Duane!
This is a very thorough examination, thank you! We were just reading through Jacob 7 recently as a family and I had earlier read a review of Miller’s thoughts. As I went through the text again, it was obvious to me that Miller was way off, but your analysis here dissects it completely.
Brings to mind Elder Cook’s recent address to beware of the philosophies of men, and of looking beyond the mark.
An excellent article. I’m glad someone took the time to respond in depth to Miller’s problematic reading, as well as notions of “Christlike behaviour” that are somehow divorced from what Christ actually said and did.
I found this review helpful and entertaining to read.