"If it be some other way it is not of God."
Did you happen to grow up, as I did, in a technological society largely organized and structured around Western Enlightenment ideas? That particular bundle of ideas supports a wide range of beliefs about spiritual things, but it also uplifts skepticism as a value, and a neat scission between the domains of science and religion. I don't mean to suggest that the two are incompatible--far from it: I staunchly believe that there is one single source of truth and that all truths can be circumscribed into one great whole, such that the dichotomy is ultimately false. But while religion is ultimately compatible with all scientific truth, science can't claim purview over truth with no limits. There are questions that science can never claim to answer because it proceeds through a method that has to be empirical at bottom. Unfalsifiable claims are simply not its purview, and so those who value science as a pathway to truth often end up reinforcing a distinction between faith and knowledge as if it were tantamount to the true distinction that exists between opinion and fact.
And Westerners like myself swim immersed in concepts of empiricism, of the progressive march of humanity's wealth of objective knowledge, and of trust in the applications we put that knowledge to, that a great many phenomena that we find difficult to apprehend through rational thought strike us as wrong, hokey, or as merely temporarily troublesome because we haven't yet learned the secret rational explanation. I'm not talking about common, but subjective experiences with the ineffable--the excitement you feel when your team wins, the stirring you get from the chord progression of your favorite band's best song, the depth of awe you feel in front of an artwork you admire, the love you share at the birth of your child. These are all things science can't explain either, but it's because they're indescribable, utterly subjective, and don't appear as apparent contradictions, illusions, or uncaused consequences. I'm more exploring the magician, the psychic, the ghost whisperer, the worshiper entranced into a paroxysm of frenetic motion, who claims not to be in control of their own body temporarily. When confronted with these--which exist only on the margins of our Western societies--isn't your mind also more cautious, more vigilant, reticent to take the phenomena at face value, seeking the key to the rational explanation that you don't have, but you can't proceed without insisting must exist? Doesn't our modern experience teach us to be skeptical of polytheistic practices and beliefs, and only flirt with "spiritism" because there's never any real threat to indulging it--it's not rational, so it has no power?
I don't think the 1830s Western frontier gateway communities were fully Westernized in that sense. Christian theology is profoundly rational and powerful as an explanation of human nature and the ways to integrate self-control in the service of higher aims that it produces at all levels from the individual to the national. But in this period, its doctrines were more frequently mixed with charismatic practices, ecstatic experiences, and openness to explanations for some phenomena that we would find unsatisfactory today, even within the realm of religion. Divining rods for water or treasure seeking, seer stones for connection to unworldly sources of wisdom, relics imbued with supernatural power--Christians of various kinds had various orientations toward these kinds of connection to God and His Spirit through means of some kinds or others, and they weren't always seen negatively. Similarly, the surrounding decades marked the beginnings of a transition between dealing with the mentally ill or palsied as if they were a family and community problem of spiritual possession, and dealing with them as if they were a state responsibility to be handled by medical expertise. All this to say that the idea of imputing to "spirits" the cause of a material disturbance, a divine communication, a malady, or a claim of involuntary action has been thoroughly drummed out of our current collective imagination, but was an available explanation among Christians in 1831 Ohio.
I have never seen an exorcism. Or a ghost. I don't expect to. I believe that every body alive has a spirit inside, but that's a matter of rational shorthand to explain an essence I can't directly observe which leaves the body inanimate at death. Its existence makes a system of corollaries equally rational: spirits are the "deciding" faculty of humans; they're made of immortal stuff we can't measure, but we see the effects of; acting through a body, spirits affect the world for good or evil, and the Father-God who created them as His children will hold them accountable for their use of that agency, out of perfect justice and perfect love. There are others, but while belief in spirits makes life's purposes and my theology make sense in the abstract, this doesn't mean I have to believe any concrete claim that a deed done, a word spoken, or an ill effect experienced was due to any given spirit. The scriptures may speak of cases that I do believe in, like the Legion cast into the swine by the Lord, but I'm skeptical of reports of them today.
Maybe you're like me in this. Today, we'd more likely see a trance not as a possessed person, but as a dissociative state fully explained by psychological science. We'd be more likely to see multiple personalities as a disorder scientifically possible within a single mind, the result of a childhood psychological trauma, not of a spiritual force. We'd watch ghost-hunting TV shows and expect electromagnetic sensors and other technological "tools" to add on to the "spiritual" explanations of the showrunners.
When we think of the term "spiritual" now, it comes up as the opposite of physical or material. It might sometimes be used to distinguish an adherent to organized religion from someone who wanted to maintain institutional independence, but claimed more subjective sensitivity to non-material ideas, forces, and experiences (think new age woo-woo). But we rarely deploy the term to describe a separate unseen agent compelling or persuading a human to do, say, or believe anything.
But this latter meaning is clearly the sense in which Smith deploys it in this Section. Members of the Church professed belief in Christ, made baptismal covenants with Him, and were bringing in elements of their prior modes of worship--including shaking, babbling in tongues, claiming to receive prophecies, claiming to have visions, and a host of other practices that no longer feature in LDS services, and haven't for almost two centuries.
So how do we reconcile taking the contextual meaning of "spiritual" for what it was at the time, and still being able to draw out applications for the current day? Those "spirits" that we don't understand aren't literally among the things we encounter because we're not open to that explanation. We would reject them outright, rather than seeking to understand such. So what's our lesson?
One way to draw out a meaning is to abstract out a principle, and sometimes that requires metaphorical extension. It's clear that there is both a principle and a process still applicable today in these verses. We may not believe someone is possessed BY a spirit, but they can be possessed OF ideas that don't add up, aren't fitting the truth, or come from contexts we're unsure of. There is a spirit, Satan, who whispered those lies to them through some agency we can't materially detect. Can we test those like the Lord reasoned to the Elders that the spirits could be tested? Could we know if ideas were not from God and not be deceived just like we can know, by their "way" if spirits are not from God? I think that's not only licensed by the text, but it's the essential principle of the teaching. We must share light as we discuss truth, and do it in such a way as to edify, build common understanding, and leave our encounter with both sides feeling positive.
I don't always succeed at this, and even Jesus didn't either. He's the perfect teacher, and yet some truths, by their nature and by the nature of the recipients and their choice to accept it or not were rejected by the majority of those Christ ministered to. Just because someone feels icky or targeted by the truth, doesn't mean the Spirit wasn't there. One party can't hijack the test of whether X is from God. Sometimes--and I'm very much still learning when and how, and have made egregious errors in judging the right way to approach sharing some truths to some people in some situations--they just won't listen, no matter how right you are. But when the efforts to create a baseline of common ground and mutual openness to honest communication are successful, the Gospel's light does tend to dispel darkness all by itself. All you have to do is share it, and the Spirit of the Lord touches the mind and heart of your interlocutor. I've seen this happen a gazillion times, and have been on the receiving end even more. I know how it feels to teach, and come together with my child, my friends, my students, and "get" each other. And all other ways are not of God.
Are you open to the light? Do you share what you have? Are you speaking in code that baffles or not giving enough space for your conversation partners to experiment on your words? Or are you instead meeting people where they are, in their language, in comprehensible terms, with appropriate expectations of freely chosen growth? You can know these ideas are from God because of the peace and joy in your heart, because of how they make sense internally, coherently, and between sharer and receiver, and because they grow the relationship between you. And you can act like He acts, by bringing peace, love, and edification together. No railing accusations required if they don't accept the truth, or share something that's not quite right. Just share the light. It will eventually illuminate the darkness they still hold onto. The darkness, in fact, has no permanent defense against your magnification of God's warmth. We'll all line up with His truth sooner or later. Until then, we can love, lighten burdens, and enlighten each other according to the Spirit of God that we have received. We can "reason" with others as He reasons with us--in patience.
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