Nature of Scripture

This is a religious post. It may or may not have implications for those who are not LDS, but it is addressed primarily to an LDS audience.

The latest controversy in Salt Lake with the policy regarding the children of LGBT couples has highlighted something for me that has long been my opinion, but which I wonder why isn't well understood by LDS members. This concept is "Church Policy is not the same thing as Eternal Truth."

An example of Church Policy is "what night of the week should Family Home Evening be on." An example of Eternal Truth is "I am a child of God." Church Policy is a necessarily pragmatic operational decision, similar to most other policy by most other organization. Eternal Truth is deep spiritual learning God intends for you to get through participation in The Church.

If The Church changes what night of the week Family Home Evening is on, should this become a crisis of faith for you, since "God is Eternal and does not turn from left or right?" Of course not. Church Policy is not supposed to convey deep spiritual meaning.

However with the mass exodus from The Church planned for today in protest of the children of LGBT policy, it is pretty clear that many people are willing to give up deep spiritual meaning they get in The Church in protest of Church Policy, equating the two as one in the same. This is also true of many of the members who are not leaving, LGBTs being spiritual villains they are being protected against via Church Policy. However this Church Policy is NOT supposed to say ANYTHING about the long-term spiritual well being of the children of LGBT, and the policy itself says so explicitly.

It requires you to do very little research to realize that Brigham Young was fond of what black priesthood holders the LDS had, then was put in a situation where he needed to enact a temporary Church Policy to deny the priesthood to blacks, and then proceeded to mistake this Church Policy as being related to Eternal Truth. ("Whites should never marry blacks" for example.) A number of following LDS prophets made a similar mistake with the same policy.

It is my humble opinion, not to say here official church doctrine, that the same thing goes for Polygamy. Jacob chapter 2 is very explicit about how foul polygamy is considered to be by God, and exactly what circumstances God MAY call for polygamy, and suggests those circumstances are rare. In spite of Jacob chapter 2, many LDS and various prophets have suggested polygamy is a very important part of the afterlife.

However I think this inability to separate policy and spirituality is connected to Fundamentalism in LDS culture. "Fundamentalist" in LDS culture means "apostate polygamist." But "Fundamentalist" in religion generally refers to people who take scripture to be taken completely literally. In LDS culture, the most extreme Fundamentalists are indeed our apostate polygamists, but I think Fundamentalism runs otherwise rampant in the LDS community, the common belief that polygamy is an important part of the afterlife derived from a few chapters in the Doctrine and Covenants being just one example.

LDS believe like many other Christians that Jesus was the mortal form of God, who resurrected himself after his death. When Jesus was here, he did not lecture us on deep history, or try to explain to us detailed scientific principles. Instead he taught through parables THAT WERE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE LITERALLY TRUE. He sought to educate us on matters of personal character, how we can be better people. LDS believe that God's purpose is to "bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." The LDS also believe that the main barrier standing between any given mortal and their eternal life is their own moral character - the kind of person they are and what kind of person they are becoming.

God's teachings are then to inform you how to be a better person, not to lecture you on science and history. We have some debate in The Church about how literal various stories in the Old Testament should be taken. Should they be taken as "literal" - as a history or science lesson, versus should they be taken "symbolically", meant to convey some secret meaning of great supernatural power. Both are misguided - the "moral of the story" is the point of the story, not the symbols, and certainly not the literal text.

Let's take the Book of Mormon for example. The book itself says that the appropriate way to embrace scripture is to "liken it unto yourself," even if you are unfamiliar the exact geography and politics the original story is based on. The book goes on to say that "only matters of spiritual importance" are recorded in the book - so that regardless of what the most important political and social events of their times are, only the events considered to convey spiritual meaning to us are recorded in the book! "Liken the scriptures unto us" plus "only spiritually important events" means "moral of the story is the point of this book." Therefore it hardly matters at all if the events in the Book of Mormon literally took place - the whole thing could be a work of fiction created by an angel to convey important meaning for us for our own salvation as children of God trying to become more like Him. When I hear people fretting over "DNA evidence and the Book of Mormon," I have to shake my head and think that this person has missed the point of the Book of Mormon entirely.

Mormons like many other Christians essentially believe that the Burning Bush that Moses encountered - the being that gave us the Old Testament up to Moses's point in history - was Jesus in camouflage. It was Jesus's personality to teach real life morals through fictional storytelling. Therefore I have to ask you, how much of the Old Testament before Moses was intended to be parable and not deep history or lectures on the scientific origins of the universe? Answer: it doesn't matter in the slightest, because the point of scripture is to make us better people, not to teach science or history.

Taking Church Policy as Eternal Truth was an understandable mistake for earlier generations of LDS who did not enjoy the hindsight we have now. But we - after all the crow we have eaten on so many controversial issues from the past - have no excuse - we should know better. Doing so is an exercise in Fundamentalism - taking whatever words we can get our hands on and assuming that they are God's own explanation of science and history, instead of asking ourselves what the big picture morality questions are of our current circumstances. It is an Eternal Truth that we need to back up our leaders and be supportive in spite of controversy, it is an act of Fundamentalism to get so deeply offended by a Church Policy that you sacrifice your own spiritual practices in protest.