Public Shaming is to Public Shame as Contention is to Self Defense - D&C 71:4-7

 

"Labor ye in my vineyard. Call upon the inhabitants of the earth, and bear record, and prepare the way for the commandments and revelations which are to come. Now, behold this is wisdom; whoso readeth, let him understand and receive also; For unto him that receiveth it shall be given more abundantly, even power. Wherefore, confound your enemies; call upon them to meet you both in public and in private; and inasmuch as ye are faithful their shame shall be made manifest."

Section 71 is directed individually at Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith whose proselyting efforts were not as yet full time because of other projects of importance--the new translation of the Bible, notably--and it calls on them to proselyte in the local area for a time. But the revelation stands as generalizable in many ways as well.

First, a structural ambiguity: the phrase "this is wisdom" may be referring to its antecedent (bearing record, preparing the way for the reception of commandments and revelations from God by laboring in the mission field) or it could be introducing the wisdom contained in the next few clauses (reading, understanding, receiving). Both lead to valuable readings: 1. laboring to introduce the Lord's messages to the world, or laboring in the field of your calling, whatever it is, even simply sharing your testimony with people is wise work because it allows both you and those among your audience who receive the ministry you perform to receive more abundantly from Him, and gives you power to remain unshaken when "enemies" attempt to belittle or persuade you, and they leave confounded when you are allow the Lord's strength to hold you in His truth; 2. we can't just read the scriptures, but we have to receive them by applying them to our behaviors such that it's not the theoretical knowledge that permits growth unto the confounding of "enemies" but the persistent doing of the Lord's will that ends up confounding those who contend with reason or persecution. The latter suggests that confounding the "enemies" is not accomplished by verbal defense, but rather that by meeting with them in public and/or in private (the latter first, if they'll allow it!) it can be your walk, your demeanor, your actions which leave naysayers demonstrably undone. Your faithful results are what eventually manifest their shame at falsely accusing you.

Whichever reading seems most apt to you, this particular duo was addressing specific, recent, high profile criticisms from a recently disciplined elder disenchanted with the Church, to a point of influence not yet previously encountered, who was trying to poison the relationship both between the church members and their leaders, and also between the community and its neighbors on a large public scale.

Ezra Booth brought a high education for the times, and a deep expertise with Biblical prophecy to his first encounters with missionaries. He was a Methodist Episcopalian minister at the time he felt the Spirit confirm the truth of Joseph Smith's claims to a Restoration of the Church as the latter laid hands and pronounced a blessing of healing upon a mutual acquaintance--Elsa Johnson with whom Smith later shared a home, and who had previously been converted to Methodism by Booth's preaching--which restored motion to a previously paralyzed arm.

It seems his expectations that the immediately miraculous must attend the Restored Church's worship, actions, and projects led him to quickly forget his original impetus for joining--that healing experience combined with later deep doctrinal discussions with Elsa's husband about the Book of Mormon's contents--and allow his mind to dwell on failure after failure of the humans in the Church to meet said expectations. After he brought up criticisms in one too many wrong ways and/or venues, and took to preaching under his own authority things that ran contrary to the revealed truth, Smith and other elders made a formal intervention and stripped him of preaching privileges. Three days later he began condensing his criticisms into a series of nine letters, ostensibly addressed to a private party he knew in his former profession as a fellow clergyman, but designed and destined for wide publication in an area periodical: the Ohio Star.

One can hardly blame the public for the paper's rising sales during the Oct-Dec. 1831 publication dates--their area was host to a new group of religious believers who were growing fairly rapidly, had some extravagantly distinct beliefs, claimed to be a new version of the Christianity they were ostensibly familiar with many varieties of, and lived out a Shaker-like, but not quite economic system. As their neighbors were growing, how sensational it must have seemed to read an "insider's" account articulated with eloquence of "romantic" (read: wild, fanciful) tales of charlatans among them. How informed they must have felt, and how felicitously inoculated against sneaky cultists they must have felt after reading, just in case any of that crazy and dangerous bunch came to their doors as missionaries. They must have needed neither suspicion nor curiosity any longer, for they already knew all they needed to know. At least this effect seems to have been Booth's clear intention upon publication.

Smith and Rigdon, one a prophet, the other an equally educated scriptorian able to refute the "proof texts" Booth could attempt to level, had clear and present spiritual dangers to confront on their home turf with these letters now in circulation. Counteracting the misconceptions the letters fomented was hard work, and required public commentary to match the forum Booth chose. 

In my eternal quest for context, I went through all nine letters. I found a few striking things. 

First, it's not like he got all the facts wrong--there are a few glaring lies, and a lot of personal grudges evident, but as one reads between the lines of a known biased picture of the people and practices within the Church of the day, it's not a systematic takedown so much as a window.

Next, while none of his conclusions have legs, some of the arguments are self-contradictory in surprising ways. For example, he derides Smith personally at length for tight and arbitrary control of a revelatory power and the documents it produces, and yet he's aware that these revelation documents are being prepared, even as he writes, for publication as widely as possible. He also describes with contempt some of the more mantic, or charismatic worship practices wherein ordinary members who would claim to receive random revelations or have random gifts of tongues that the leaders were allowing to speak, and yet he claims that cult-like levels of initiation carefully controlled and bound the will of these disparately directed agents to a central authority. The truth is that Smith wasn't trying to hide or control, but did, from time to time, have to exercise due discipline on the contents of the revelations.

Third, while he does throw a barb or two at Smith and Rigdon personally for what he perceives as indolence in ordering homes to be made for them and moneys to be granted them for conveniences that their underlings didn't enjoy without need for them to labor with their own hands for their own support, Booth spends next to zero ink on the mind-blowing economic system that the United Order implemented at the time. Shakers who were loosely part of the ecumenical neighborhood lived a communal lifestyle with enough points of similarity in the experience of readers that maybe this just didn't seem scandalous enough for him to try to make hay out of. But it also may be true that living with "all things in common" as the early church tried to was simply Biblical enough for him that he didn't see fit to attack it systematically.

Fourth, he recycles fairly frequently his "distaste" for being "compelled" by the "truth" to write such negative things about a people he was once a part of, but he never tells the full story. You have to learn of his own conversion elsewhere. It's like in his zeal to act on fresh disciplinary measures, he can't bring himself to recall with any positivity whatsoever any of the things he felt were true at the time. Alma's warning to Ammonihah Nehorians about God's system of pride-filtration and faith-building comes to mind about God taking away even what they have if people choose to fail to act in faith on the portion of the Word they are given.

Finally, Booth definitely spent hours deftly bending his pen to the purpose of character assassination--most notably of Smith, Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery, who he charged as weak-minded cowards--and of characterizing what details of revelations he did faithfully cite as unfulfilled and as evidence of false claims to prophecy. But nowhere in the nine letters does he explain a single doctrinal disagreement or cite any Biblical scripture to back his claims that the revelations he was privy to (the Book of Mormon, and whatever unpublished, but transcribed copies of the various sections of the Doctrine and Covenants as were extant prior to publication). He outlines grievances and disappointments with the leaders, the credulity of the ordinary members, and the failures of revelations or manifestations of the Spirit to rise to his expectations, but he proceeds as if it's entirely Biblical to suspect that a Restored church, with prophets (and soon to be Apostles), and a revealed set of ancient scripture as companion to the Bible, could exist, and that it comports completely with Methodism to expect immediate miracles and signs. He hints in his first letter that the "Mormonites" as he calls them don't consult their Bibles very often, and aren't exactly "sola scriptura" types. But his reasoning for disliking this isn't because of the simple fact that a Book of Mormon exists--which most Evangelicals would immediately balk at with no other argument necessary--but rather because they believe so strongly in a modern-day Prophet that they would rather just consult him rather than try to work out what the Bible has to say on the matter for themselves. He's not kindly disposed to the Book of Mormon, by the end of his letters, but he doesn't systematically attempt any internal or external discrediting other than noting how they contain prophecies he doesn't see fulfilled yet.

All this is to say that Booth's perspective can be engaged with honestly, without fear that he might undermine the testimony of anyone who has one, but that this honest engagement must include fair contextual suspicion of his conclusions if not his facts. And it's no surprise that Rigdon and Smith seemed to be able to reason with neighbors sufficiently for the growth of the church to continue. To be sure, there was also continued resistance, even to the point of mob violence, but missionaries had a less cold reception after their efforts to restore the balance of truth to the one-sided "conversation" Booth was supplying. Booth was not telling the truth. He was just jilted.

In case anyone is interested in the "rest" of the story, I don't know much more than what Wikipedia asserts, but it appears that Booth lived a long life, and bounced from credulity to disillusionment at a number of fringe Christian communities--including Millerism, and Shakerism--before giving up on Christianity entirely and dying an agnostic.

To my mind, Booth's obvious pride is the cautionary tale here. We can't expect the Lord to conform to our opinions of Him, but rather we should expect to conform to His truths and prescriptions for us. It's notoriously hard to diagnose our own pride, but when we see the signs of disappointment with expectations of leaders arise, maybe it's time to ask ourselves whether it's our expectations that are the issue. And in any case, the antidote to pride is loving service--go out and do what the Lord asks, and let Him increase your patience with your fellows just as He has patience for you.

And, as a last commentary, this post's title deserves a sentence or two. Staying humble when you know you're right is just as tricky as staying humble under the illusion that you're right. Probably because it's the illusion of being right that's impossible to undo without an open mind and heart already in action. But for those, like me, who have studied the explanations that bring light to the mind, and who have felt the occasional feelings the Spirit bears as its fruit, and yet whose testimony depends neither on mere feelings nor mere logic, but on a manifestation that the Spirit gave, which no argument or emotional manipulation can take away, we can know we're right and "confound our enemies" without shaming, without contention. We simply share. We simply keep focus on substance--on what's right, rather than who's right--and on its positive expression. We are apologists, by which I mean we defend, never attack, but we only defend when actually attacked and don't easily take offense when misrepresentations arise, even maliciously and publicly. Shame will come to all who attack the truth, but not because its defenders seek emotional vengeance, but rather because all will internally be convicted of their own guilt when the Way, the Truth, and the Life condemns all lies at either the last day or any day before then, in His time, not ours. Sometimes the only way to avoid contention is to be prepared to defend what enemies are invested in attacking--there can be no peace when one side persists in an abusive lie--but in our free societies, the best persuasions rarely come in debate form, but rather by way of demonstrations, over lengthy periods, of the fruits of true beliefs.

If you were ever accused of being a true Christian, would there be sufficient evidence to convict you?

The Stewardship Principle - D&C 70:7-9

 

"Inasmuch as they receive more than is needful for their necessities and their wants, it shall be given into my storehouse; And the benefits shall be consecrated unto the inhabitants of Zion, and unto their generations, inasmuch as they become heirs according to the laws of the kingdom. Behold, this is what the Lord requires of every man in his stewardship."

The Church of Jesus Christ has very few paid positions. For those with full-time callings which prevent them from carrying out their worldly occupation, there is a stipend paid from the tithing funds of the church for their ministry. It's enough to live decently, but not opulently. At the local level, on the other hand, ministries are voluntary. The time, energy, travel, and other means is donated over and above what adults earn by labor for the support of their own families in their various professions. This follows the biblical pattern of Peter who would not exchange money for the Priesthood, and yet who was supported by saints through voluntary hospitality in his ministry after the Lord's ascension, rather than through any salary.

And yet, the church does have business affairs. Printing, real estate and its maintenance, travel agents, corporate holdings as is wise to administer the tithes (which are channeled centrally, then used locally by allotment) and offerings (which are used locally, and with only excesses being routed centrally), and historical and genealogical monuments and tools for public use, even educational institutions--all of it to fulfill the missions of the Church. In all cases, there are appointees hired for services, chosen for expertise or interest, not always specifically called by the Lord, and they operate under a principle of stewardship.

Stewardship is an awkward concept for modern folks, especially in the West. We like to think of ourselves as egalitarians with rights to private property and responsibility only to ourselves to pursue happiness as we see fit under such guarantees of life, liberty, and equal opportunity as our democratic institutions can provide us. What I earn, I earn; what I spend, I spend, what I risk becomes my return and my just desserts. Individualism and free enterprise can procure prosperity as long as I supply the work--the action on resources. But the profit motive is terrestrial at best. It doesn't conform to celestial law. In the heavens, the economy of God is utopian, but not because it agrees with Marx on the fundamental goodness of the proletariat seizing the means of production. Instead, it balances individual freedom to freely act on resources with an Accountability Node of perfect wisdom, or a duly authorized representative holding Priesthood keys to that calling. In other words, as we consecrate our all to God, we recognize that it's all His, and we covenant to grow closer to Him by acting on His resources with more care than we would even for our own property--not thinking of it as ours to abuse and destroy as we see fit, which all ownership ultimately means--out of gratitude, out of love, out of care to use it for the best application to others that we can.

Stewardship leaves us free, but adds accountability to a covenant judge to what would otherwise be naked capitalism. It keeps us tethered to the collective benefit each individual effort adds by profiting from their own activity, but through voluntary structures rather than taxes, compliance officers, or politburos. We act for ourselves, for our own growth, on our own hook if we fail, so that we see to our own needs and that of our families under real conditions of incentive to do our best. And if there is surplus, we are free to donate according to our own management decisions rather than according to arbitrary quotas from people who might mean well, but don't live in our homes or skin. It's not the capitalist caricature of "catch as catch can" profiteering, but it's not the incentive-free utopianism of the socialists, either. There is private property that voluntarily contributes to the collective, not a collective administered centrally. There is an incentive to work, and there is a duty to return and report on what the work accomplished. Yet the benefits of the work aren't all in the profit itself, but rather in the growth in character along the way--the closeness to Christ one receives when blessed for doing as He would.

The above passage is taken from a specific charge to a specific group of trusted Church leaders being tasked to form the first publication "firm" to fill a need to get printed copies of the Revelations given to Joseph Smith into the hands of as many members as possible--along with other publication projects, like pedagogical materials for children. The appointees in question were familiar with the business, familiar with literary production, and familiar with the Prophet, and were either men of means themselves, or men with experience managing means. The Lord had brought them together and given them a charge, and they nearly all impoverished themselves in the risk it took to get the publishing enterprise off the ground. The press they purchased and the copies of its first printing of its core mission text--the Doctrine and Covenants--were nearly all destroyed by arson at the hands of a mob angry at the arrival of strange beliefs and people in their frontier territory. Their consecration came at the cost of great sacrifice.

But the passage applies generally, not merely specifically. When we are entrusted with anything by the Lord, if we conform to the pattern of seeing to our "wants" (careful! this 1828 term does NOT mean whatever your heart desires, but rather your lacks) and needs through acting on the trust with the goal of serving the Lord, He magnifies our efforts, produces surplus that we can consecrate to Him and to His children, our fellows.

And the pattern is as merely temporal as are all of God's laws--which is to say that it's not at all. Whether we are blessed with dollars or experiences, whether we have offerings of time or of testimony, being accountable to our bishop to bring surplus to the Lord's storehouse which keys to administer he holds, he can supply someone else's wants and needs--the giver and the receiver both being blessed by the consecrated act, both sides drawing closer to the Lord because that's what covenant relationships do.

Stewards love their Lord. They report to Him without formal command or procedure. They don't merely hold, but act to improve. And they care about His approval more than his material, because the framework for growth is not a competition, it's a cooperative expression of faith. He is able to do His own work, but He entrusts to each a portion of His gifts so that we--through each other--may all feel His love and redeeming power expanding our potential. His Church is like family, not business. His stewardships are training for our celestial inheritance. The time to prepare is now in mortality.

And now, a few quick post-script notes on 70:12-14 which reads as follows:

"He who is appointed to administer spiritual things, the same is worthy of his hire, even as those who are appointed to a stewardship to administer in temporal things; Yea, even more abundantly, which abundance is multiplied unto them through the manifestations of the Spirit. Nevertheless, in your temporal things you shall be equal, and this not grudgingly, otherwise the abundance of the manifestations of the Spirit shall be withheld."

The referents in this passage aren't super clear because we don't have all the context that was clear to those on the ground at the time. It's possible that those "appointed to administer spiritual things" is a reference to Smith and his current scribe Sidney Rigdon, who were called to complete the Bible translation Smith was working on, which would remove them from the capacity to earn their own livings for a time. Smith was, indeed, living off the hospitality of the Johnsons at this time, with a room in their home donated to him, his wife, and their adopted twins. They weren't drawing a salary as far as I can ascertain, and weren't lazy or indulgent in their participation in help for their upkeep or requirements for food and shelter. But this reference may also apply to others who were not called like bishops to execute economic decisions, but were, instead, focused on spiritual ministry--like missionaries.

But while it certainly may, by the laws of antecedent scope, I don't think the dative pronoun in the next clause is intended as exclusive to those who administer in spiritual things--the "abundance" multiplied "more abundantly" can be for both those who administer in spiritual and in temporal things. The Spirit manifests through gifts that sometimes touch on the temporal anyway--gifts of discernment, gifts of tongues, gifts of being healed, gifts of administration, for example--so that it is hard to imply that those who have clearly spiritual callings get the better manifestations. Maybe so. I'm just pointing out that the language deployed here doesn't fully foreclose either interpretation: "unto them" might mean unto anyone with any calling.

On the other hand, the withholding principle is clearly exclusive--if people aren't being "equal" in temporal things, the spiritual things will wane as well. But even here, let's not assume "equal" means equality of result. Being "equal" in 1828 could, and likely does in this context, refer to being even-handed, or principle-based in applying rules to all without respect of persons, rather than to some modern woke version of equity in all matters of property. The rich man doesn't lose the Spirit because he's rich, but because he loves his riches more than his fellow humans or his God. Equality of opportunity predicts inequality of spiritual and economic result, but if we attempt by force to flatten the collective inequality of result, we'd surely lose the freedom and the Spirit that is required to produce any growth whatsoever. Because God's plan is one of moral agency, not compulsion. Instead, this part of the passage seems pretty clearly to target administrators for even-handed administration so as not to lose the Spirit either through fewer manifestations, or people in whom the manifestations occur, because they are driven away by the unfairness of the leaders. In either case, the account will have to be made.

And in any case, having an abundance of spiritual manifestations seems to be contingent upon principles of temporal fairness.

Stakes, Families, and the Age of Accountability - D&C 68:25

 

"inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents."

The theory of moral agency predicts that all of God's children who have advanced to their mortal test will choose the wrong, that this mortal space will therefore be full of sin and its consequences, itself being part of the test conditions, and that there will be a range of the acceptance of the saving doctrines, even among those who have the advantage of learning them from birth in a home filled with the Spirit and excellent models of Christ-like living. Loving families which take seriously the responsibility to teach moral principles, and instill faith in the Redeemer early give their children the best chance of retaining that faith, but since we are all agents unto ourselves, the most pious, most effective, and most thorough teachings within the family are never sufficient to induce individual testimony. Those have to be earned personally. The best parents, therefore, have an uphill climb to indoctrinate their children while young enough. They can do everything right, and still have children whose free will is simply to reject the Savior and His Church, or simply fail to take up their responsibility to find out for themselves what is true and right and eternally worthwhile.

But indoctrination is what's required. It is a full immersion in the demonstration of being all-in for the Lord that is necessary. Faith is built on work, and while the youngest can't comprehend the full meaning of the commitment the Lord asks, they can and must be taught to build the habits of faith that insure the best chance at internalizing the truth.

Someone I knew whose relationship with the church was itself tenuous felt that it was unfair to bring children to church every Sunday, get them involved in church-centered peer group activities, and hold family devotional time, or even lead daily family prayers. They are young. That's manipulative, isn't it? Why not wait until they're old enough to understand intellectually what's going on, and what their choices are. Then they can make a free choice in full light of their moral and intellectual faculties.

I get where he's coming from, but it's wrong-headed and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what faith is. Faith is hard. It takes effort to build. By delaying the introduction of the principles, and the building up of the muscles of faith until the child has the intellectual capacity to judge the consequences for themselves, you've ensured that they are too weak to see faith as anything but the hard and inconvenient choice. You've brought the child to the starting line of a marathon before their first 3k. You've plunked the child down at a test on integral calculus without their first lessons in geometry or arithmetic. You've crippled their capacity for understanding delayed gratification and for orienting their aims toward higher goals than themselves when you tell them they don't have to choose until they are "old enough to know", because knowing the benefits of being 100% committed to something in order to compare apples to apples requires that they have some experience being 100% committed to something--even when they don't feel like it, even when they don't "want to", even when peers or temptations, or mistakes make it hard. In order for the choice to actually be fair, they have to have been insiders long enough to have a sense of the long-term benefits on the inside.

And actually, indoctrination is happening whether you do it or not. The question isn't if, it's who. If you're not indoctrinating your kids, you're leaving it to someone else--someone more worldly. Someone less inclined to show your child that putting down a temporary pleasure now to work on something worthwhile is a noble sacrifice, one that prepares you for service, for growth, and for taking on the burdens of life when life gets hard.

So take your window and use it to the max. Christ has absorbed the consequences for all mistakes before age eight. Why that age? Not because 8-year-olds are fully cognizant of all the pros and cons of covenanting with Christ. But maybe because that is roughly the age they begin to develop their own moral skills--where they BEGIN to become accountable, and therefore where a wrong choice MAY be imputed to their guilt. Does this mean the parents are fully off the hook at baptism time? Nope. Children still need moral training, probably even long into what we consider adulthood. There's no scriptural date that defines an age or other sign of when the process of becoming accountable completes, only when it begins. In fact, there's a case to be made that even the most intelligent, most morally upright, and most in tune adults still have no fair warning about the nature of the eternal consequences of any of their decisions--we simply have no clue what eternal guilt or blessing feel like. It devolves to poetry to even attempt some explanation of the rewards or punishments of God. We can know with a surety that our choices are good when they are, because of their direction, not out of a rational comprehension of what it takes to obtain X eternal outcome. This life has a veil. We must make our choices in faith, without full knowledge.

So what are the key basics we need to build personal testimony on and instill personal faith-enhancing habits around? Long before the 13 Articles of Faith were published, this passage lists them: personal faith in Christ (subordinating all acts to the belief that He saves), repentance (allowing Him to change our penitent hearts for the better), baptism (submission to an authorized ritual symbolizing the start of covenantal belonging with Christ), and the Gift of the Holy Ghost (acceptance of His direction as ordained through His authorized representatives). Don't stop reading, though. Other key principles beyond this verse include: prayer; walking in His ways, or obedience to His commandments and observance of His prescribed rituals, Sabbath observance in particular; and continual expenditure of energy for the benefit of others.

Notice that the Sabbath observance and the labor on the other days are messages not just for pre-baptismal children, but for all the inhabitants of Zion. Notice that Zion is a society composed of covenant makers and keepers, of individuals of strength and conviction who spend their energy for the benefit of all--family first, but then beyond as efforts yield profits. Notice that this passage contains the first references to "stakes" of Zion--a line-crossing new distinction in the Church which will more and more come to remove false hope for a single centralized territory as Zion's main definition, and will instead anchor in the minds of the Saints that wherever the Church is firmly established, Zion societies can result. Stakes--or local iterations of Zion--are not yet a concept the Lord has fully revealed and described at this point, and yet the allusion to them is part and parcel of the surrounding thinking on missionary work, parental roles, and the administration of temporal affairs by Bishops. As parents teach their children to walk in God's ways, their families resemble and strengthen Zion. As missionaries serve and teach those past the "starting" age of accountability to take on Christ's covenants, new individuals and families join and add their strength to Zion. As high priests act in the office of bishop, exercising their keys of the spiritual judgment and temporal welfare of Zion, its material and spiritual strength expands. Its stakes strengthen. Its tent is metaphorically stretching to cover its inhabitants more firmly, more protectively, more fully with Christ as the center pole supporting the entire structure.

Families, stakes of Zion, covenants are all pulling those of every age toward their eventual accountability before Christ whose coverage on judgment day will enable only those who have accepted Him to escape the Father's justice. I pray that He will say to you and I: well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Scripture versus Canon - D&C 68: 4

 

"whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord, shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation."

 Careful, folks. The Holy Ghost gives utterance, yes. It testifies of eternal truths, absolutely. When the Spirit moves a person to speak, to the extent they really are inspired, their words are the voice, will, and mind of the Lord, and His power unto salvation. No dispute.

However, not all claims to inspiration are true.

However, all true inspiration also has the property of scope--pronouncements bearing on matters outside the scope of the calling of the person inspired are not, in the final analysis, inspired.

However, not all scripture is canonical.

There's "scripture" and there's capital-S scripture. It sounds confusing, but it's not so unclear when you pay attention to context.

The above-cited verse is often abstracted out of its context to support the correct idea that the Holy Ghost can transmit the Lord's will to individuals, and that His words are His words--just as valuable to the recipients as prophetic writ. However, it's also taken to support an incorrect relativity of Word of God, or an incorrect argument for the proliferation of publishable and authoritative writings.

Look at the limiting scope the text itself put on verse 2, which states that the scripture part is applicable only 

"unto all those who were ordained unto this priesthood, whose mission is appointed unto them to go forth."

In other words, inspired words are scripture because of the inspiration, but the promise that everything you say under the influence of the Holy Ghost is scripture is a function limited to: a. priesthood holders, b. the scope of their calling.

There's a reason the LDS canon is referred to as the "standard works" rather than the "canon," and why they avoid talk of "inerrancy" in connection with scripture. The scope of a general authority's calling makes their Spirit-inspired Conference talks scripture in a way that is different from the way a compilation of the Lord's communications with Joseph Smith bearing on the restoration of Christ's church in response to the Master's gentle pedagogy of allowing humans to bump up against issues, wrestle with them, and inquire of Him in faith as to their resolution.

Canon is the authoritative compilation of prophet-screened inspired texts. Scripture is the doctrinal and guiding communication from the Lord to in-mission, authorized representatives. And when you understand scope, you'll never confuse the two.

Labor, Sacrifice, Humility, and Fire Insurance - D&C 64: 23-25

 

"Behold, now it is called today until the coming of the Son of Man, and verily it is a day of sacrifice, and a day for the tithing of my people; for he that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming. For after today cometh the burning—this is speaking after the manner of the Lord—for verily I say, tomorrow all the proud and they that do wickedly shall be as stubble; and I will burn them up, for I am the Lord of Hosts; and I will not spare any that remain in Babylon. Wherefore, if ye believe me, ye will labor while it is called today."

The common half-joke is not wrong: those who pay a full tithe have this scripture's promise as a claim to hold "fire insurance". However, tithing isn't defined here except in the implication of the word itself. Much of the rest of the Christian world is looser about its meaning, and therefore thinks of tithing as whatever optional amount one wishes to donate, but the word itself suggests that amount isn't so optional. Tithe literally means tenth. And that proportion is both mercifully in reach of the poorest saint and large enough to constitute a serious material sacrifice for all.

And while this passage explicitly connects tithing as a key behavior distinguishing Christians from the World--or more symbolically, Zion from Babylon, or more literally, those covered by the Savior's atonement from those not covered--tithing is not the complete set of criteria for escaping a harsh judgment even within these verses.

Notice that tithing, and the fire insurance it offers, comes as the consequence of a duty, invoked as a act of consecration whose implied result is the development of a characteristic, and that it is couched in a time frame. Reminding saints of the Lord's second coming, with all of its attendant calamities and promises, brings a sense of urgency and calls for minds and hearts to steel themselves in faithful courage. Reminding them of fires to avoid through actions in the now frames the saints as agents able to control, through their actions, the cause-and-effect logical categories they will fall into later, and further implies that a radical, polar grace will be theirs--they belong to His side of the extreme dichotomy. And reminding them of tithing's main underlying purpose and feature evokes His own main underlying purpose and feature: sacrifice, which literally means to make holy. He sacrificed Himself for us so that we could be made holy. Our material offering of a tenth of our increase requires us to think, with a heart of gratitude, of every labor and every increase as a grace for which we are required to return only a tenth. That tenth, submitted to the Church for its operational needs, wisely consumed and distributed in a way that has ensured material prosperity and with remarkably few scandals for an organization of its size, is the leaven that leavens the whole lump. Once you intend to set aside a tenth to support the missions of the Church, you have tacitly reframed all of your efforts to earn an honest magnification of your means, as faith-based. And it makes all the difference.

The key to escaping the fires of judgment isn't and never was the mere mechanical act of donation. The Lord sees both, but judges the heart, not the ledger. You can't buy your way out of Babylon, even if you pay the requisite ten percent. Because it never was about the money. It's about the holiness you put yourself on a path to developing. It's about the sacrifice, in the now, to change how you see the world and what you set your heart on. It's about putting forth your labor toward consecrated purposes--building up His kingdom, not yours--putting Him first even in all your temporal actions. It's about believing Him enough to show it.

Because showing your belief is faith, and exercising faith in Him allows Him to change you into something more like Himself.

Tithing is fire insurance only because tithing is an act of faith in Christ, and faith in Christ is the first principle of His Gospel. Tithing is one of the few watershed commandments that can, by itself, divide temple-worthy from stubble-worthy souls. But it's because the underlying hearts are set either on repentance and holiness in conformity to celestial law, or on prideful absorption in the cares of the world and selfish, material indulgences. One can be oriented in degrees, but only toward one or the other of these poles.

Tithing prevents wickedness because it tends to require humility before God, an attitude of gratitude, an eternal perspective, and a willingness to exhaust oneself for worthy goals that aim well beyond this world and this life. It's one key by which we lose our lives in order to find life more abundant. It's one principle by which we internalize He whose model of self-sacrifice we follow--He whose ministry of three years began formally at age 30, a neat 10% of His mortal time. It's one way we take upon us His name, always remember Him, keep his commandments, and live in His Spirit. It is fire insurance because we are humble fellow-laborers in a field that belongs entirely to Him when we undertake the act of donating ten percent of our growth in order to allow Him to make ourselves and the Church we are building holy like Him.

Chastening and Forgiveness - D&C 64:7-10

 

"I, the Lord, forgive sins unto those who confess their sins before me and ask forgiveness, who have not sinned unto death. My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened. Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin. I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men."

1. On forgiveness:

Among all the tumult of moves to Kirtland, a church organizing an entire new economic system, early dissensions and sensationalized publications critical of the newcomers, and revelations surrounding a Zion the church would need to carefully prepare for a move to, it's easy to forget that 25-year-old Joseph Smith was a young father, dealing with his own family's struggles. Not even six months prior to this Section's revelation on September 11th, 1831, Joseph and Emma had lost twins, both dying on the day they were born. Infant mortality rates in the 1800s were sky-high compared to now, with no modern medicine available, as were the risks of death due to childbirth. It so happened that another couple in the community where the Smiths lost their twins gave birth to twins on the same day. Tragedy struck their family too, but this time it was the mother who expired in the act of giving life, both children surviving her. The father, bereft as he must have been, knew and trusted the Smiths enough to give the twins over to them for adoption nearly immediately. Emma and Joseph's consolation at the loss of their own came in the form of being able to care for others.

But, at the time of this revelation, they couldn't have known that tragedy would strike again, in another short seven months. One of the rescued twins hung on for five days, sick of an illness he contracted by exposure on the cold March Saturday night when a mob broke the door by his bed so they could strangle, torture, tar, and feather Joseph for reasons history hasn't worked out a settled account of (although, evidence is clear that it was not, as some suppose, anger over an accusation the Smith had taken advantage of a teenager in the Johnson home where he was staying, because those claims come from parties not present, 40 years after the events, and are ahistorical with respect to the institution of polygamy, which hadn't occurred yet). Among the mob members, were some former church members who had soured on the church for its religious beliefs, for its economic practices, and for its "alarming" growth in the area, one of whom had been waging a very public and very personal war of words in area newspapers.

Because the next day was Sunday, and he was scheduled to preach, Smith and those who could care for him spent the night removing the tar, ignoring the pain, and getting presentable for the next day's audience. There were mob members in attendance at the meeting, Smith reports, and despite the recent burns and torn flesh, he delivered a homily and baptized new members. I don't know if any personally asked forgiveness. I don't know the contents of the homily. But I know the tar mob had him down about 12 to 1 the night before, and made more serious threats to his life and person than the heat of the sticky pitch, and yet his response was to preach the Gospel to them, rather than sick the better odds of his much more numerous followers on them in a revenge play. He recorded the events and his emotions are evident in his choice of details, but he doesn't reveal the heart-wrenching feeling the loss of that child must have caused him, the inability to comfort his wife it must have caused him, or any other direct remonstrances in his writings. He names names, and points out what groups the mob members represented, but he doesn't insult or rail against them, let alone release more direct forms of anger. I can't tell his heart--if or when that pain was ever fully let go--but the signs are that he practiced what he preached: forgiveness.

The above passage, delivered before Smith knew this would happen, contains the spirit Smith lived by. There are several ways to restate the lessons for effect. God can judge hearts, humans can't, so those who try are usurpers and lose the Spirit's comfort and guidance. Christ atoned for sins, humans can't, so those who refuse to forgive are demonstrating lack of confidence in the Savior and His ability to forgive. The Almighty has power to assign sentences or pardons, and does so according to His omniscience, which humans don't have, so those who withhold forgiveness from a brother can only do so out of ignorance, doubt, and enmity, none of which are characteristics of the Deity we emulate.

This is not to say that forgiveness is easy. In fact, I can hardly think of a more difficult attribute of Christ to cultivate. And I think that's part of the reason the Lord organized His children into families. Families--that fundamental unit of celestial societies--are charged to be the ideal place where children can experience love, law, and commitment despite all challenges, where they can grow into correct use of their agency, in the full light of their infinite potential, under a protective atmosphere of care. Not all families rise to this ideal, of course, but to the extent they do, families are also laboratories for forgiveness. Spouses and children have to learn patience for each other, and choose the covenant relationship over whatever temporary temptations there might be to exact revenge among those who we can hide our weaknesses from the least. Families teach us to be like Him partly because we have to repeatedly train ourselves to let go of the things that don't really matter eternally, even while we orient ourselves and help our children orient their agency upward. Families are the perfect structure for the development of self-sacrificial character. What could describe the Savior's love more aptly?

2. On chastening: 

Among the above cited passage's words, is a reference to disciples withholding forgiveness, at least temporarily, and deserving chastening for the evil. I find no clear and direct record in the New Testament of such an occasion of chastening. There are several others, which varied in the "soreness" of rebuke, including: Peter's ignorant outburst not wishing the Savior to be sacrificed; James' and John's desire to call down fire upon a recalcitrant Samaritan village; and a few minor instances of lack of faith. It's possible that this is an oblique reference to one of these, or that it's a direct reference to an occasion we don't have the record of, but which Christ can reveal to His prophets from His own experience.

What seems obvious, however, is that just as there is a relationship between repentance and forgiveness--between seeking Christ's atoning power, and accepting Christ's atoning power--there is also a relationship between love and chastening. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. Only parents who love their children communicate appropriate boundaries, and then exercise appropriate discipline when the boundaries are breached. God's charity often has to pass through whatever harshness or manner of scolding will get through to us. And I'm glad His nature is gentle, because my skull is thick, and I usually deserve more than I get. In fact, if it's His design to sanctify us all--all who will--then in recognition of the depth of injury we put Him to every time we sink back into behaviors unbecoming of His infinite purity and holiness, thereby thwarting our own eternal potential, we should be spending every waking minute expecting and accepting His chastisements. Because ultimately His plan is that none of us get what we deserve, but instead that we get His grace.

May our will align with His in acceptance of chastisements and forgiveness.

Faith versus adultery - D&C 63:12-17

 

"I, the Lord, am not pleased with those among you who have sought after signs and wonders for faith, and not for the good of men unto my glory. Nevertheless, I give commandments, and many have turned away from my commandments and have not kept them. There were among you adulterers and adulteresses; some of whom have turned away from you, and others remain with you that hereafter shall be revealed. Let such beware and repent speedily, lest judgment shall come upon them as a snare, and their folly shall be made manifest, and their works shall follow them in the eyes of the people. And verily I say unto you, as I have said before, he that looketh on a woman to lust after her, or if any shall commit adultery in their hearts, they shall not have the Spirit, but shall deny the faith and shall fear. Wherefore, I, the Lord, have said that the fearful, and the unbelieving, and all liars, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

I've had a persistent Facebook Messenger dialog over years with an evangelical Christian who routinely posts questions "for Mormons" that set themselves up as dichotomous: the Bible says X but the Book of Mormon says Y. His binary approach immediately sets up an opposition, and determines "teams". It's an immediate us vs. them paradigm that prevents him from allowing any sympathetic reading of the texts together. Much of my conversations revolved around asking him to make two essential moves before drawing conclusion: 1. gather more context so we can more fairly compare the passages; 2. view the passages in a Venn diagram and clarify the overlaps before making a case for the dissimilarities. Because I'm approaching the interpretive problem looking for mutual confirmation, the passages rarely seem discordant or contradictory to me, and where they are on the surface, it's usually because there's an inaccuracy in his framing. On the other hand, because he's approaching the interpretive task looking for contradictions, he finds plenty--not because they're actually there, but because his hermeneutic approach has an inherent bias. I have no reason to suspect he's an adulterer, but I do include this experience to illustrate a principle.

As a lit prof, I've seen his kind of interpretive lockdown happen a lot. And it's hard to break students out of it. They generally come to readings with some healthy concepts: that texts are multivalent, and that diverse perspectives can shed new light and produce new readings. That's broadly true, but there are limits: some readings simply are not licensed by the text. You can shed new light on what a thing means through theory, experience, analysis, and just freshness, but you can't make it mean something it just doesn't. There is such a thing as an incoherent argument, and there is such a thing as an invalid opinion. Not all perspectives are equally valuable in the shedding of light. It's hard to keep the balance of valuing diverse perspectives and valuing accuracy, truth, and validity in analysis, because each perspective has the inherent danger of potential self-delusion. Just because you experience a thing a certain way, doesn't mean you're right, doesn't mean you've fully understood the phenomenon in question or how it has affected you, and doesn't mean the insight you get from it is applicable to the text or its interpretation. This self-deluding propensity fuels billions in counseling, psychotherapy, and psychiatry industries.

And to add a third illustrating example, this comes up in politics a lot as well. People tend to get invested in their ideology to the point that pointing out unfairness or inaccuracies in their opinions looks to them like defending their enemies, like you're on the wrong side. It's possible that I'm just a extraordinarily bad communicator and haven't learned the secret, yet, to smoothly enabling a friend to accept valid critique, but it's also true that it's largely an impossible task because of human nature. There's a reason it's considered impolite to discuss politics and religion at the dinner table, and it doesn't matter how honestly compassionate you are, or how eloquent you are, when people get told a hard truth, they tend to hunker down, get defensive, and hold all the tighter to the idea you just "helped" them to discard as erroneous.

None of this is surprising to folks who are familiar with Nephi's record of dealings with his own family members, and his quote to wayward and recalcitrant brothers that "the wicked take the truth to be hard." I don't mean to suggest that everyone who has a hard time accepting another person's "truth" is guilty of wickedness, but it's still true that wickedness infallibly distorts meaning.

One other way of restating that scripture's meaning is that attitude is everything. Attitude determines a person's interpretative horizons for every task of reading (and by reading, I mean in the broadest possible sense of making meaning out of anything). It doesn't authoritatively fix meaning, but it does determine what limits there are on your acceptance of it.

As context for this Section, a small, well-educated, and experienced group of potential leaders--all fairly new converts to the church because the church itself was barely into its second year of operation--were invited to travel to the physical location Joseph Smith would reveal as Zion. There was a purpose to the travel arrangements: some were to travel quickly to be present as close as possible to the arrival time of the Colesville saints who had begun their travels earlier; others were to travel through slower, less costly, and less comfortable methods so as to disseminate a missionary message along the way. To neutral and kindly disposed observers, these purposes seemed rational and acceptable. To a fault-finder, however, it might be noticed that the consequence was that higher ups got privileges that underlings couldn't enjoy. Attitude determines interpretive possibilities.

In a parallel situation, across two millennia, an influential, well-educated, and theologically trained group of Jews--established over generations as leaders of piety--were invited to witness miracles, and join the Light of the World as He taught the keys of His kingdom. Neutral and worshipful observers felt the Spirit testify of the Son of God burn within them as He spoke and ministered, as He taught and healed. But because He seemed to lead his followers to more flippant attitudes than they liked about the Sabbath day--a day for which they had devised and enforced elaborate extra rules above and beyond those written in the Law of Moses--they took up a fault-finding stance. It delivered them everything their hearts actually sought: contention and spiritual blindness. Attitude determines interpretive possibilities.

Now imagine what must be occurring in the mind of one who succumbs to the sin of adultery. They are under covenant vows, but the meaning of those vows means less and less to them the more they indulge tempting thoughts. They know, on some level at least, that the thoughts lead to actions, and that they should exercise self-discipline at the thought level in order to stay on the right side of an important line--one of the deepest possible kinds of betrayal, the betrayal of a spouse's intimate trust. But they progressively ignore both the evil and the covenant itself. They engage in justifying the unjustifiable: he doesn't deserve me, she's not keeping her side of our vows, my spouse owes me things they aren't giving, this isn't a 50-50 arrangement anymore. Whatever the proximal "reason", as distorted as it is, at some point, the idea occurs to them that they could take an action that would give them temporary benefits without the responsibility--they could indulge in the simulation of a relationship with someone with simpler rules, a more advantageous playing field for how that relationship was balanced, without counting the cost. They conceive--well before they act--of a self-delusion in which intimacy can be exchanged, even commodified, rather than earned through the self-sacrifice of investment in a covenantal relationship. And then they conveniently forget altogether that the covenant was between three parties, not just two. God drops out of the equation, and the sinner is left in their own selfishness. Light, love, and truth leave them entirely. If you have ever seen an adulterer, you have also seen a liar. If you have ever understood love, you understand how adultery is its thief. If you have ever served, learned, or felt light in the other ways God sends it to you, you can't imagine adultery as any less than shameful darkness.

John Bytheway uses similar language to describe the commonality between the mindset of the adulterer, and the mindset of the fault-finding sign-seeker who refuses to believe until they see God's power with their own eyes (and, again, attitude determining interpretive possibilities as it does, they've all already seen that power, and merely refuse to recall, or allow it entry for what it is). 

"It comes down to a something for nothing attitude. I want the testimony. I don’t want to do the work. I don’t want to do the prayer. I don’t want to do the study. I don’t want to do the repenting. I don’t want to do the humility. Just show me it’s true first. With adultery, I want the pleasure of another person. I don’t want any commitment. I don’t want any expectation. I just want the pleasure. For me, it always just sounds like a real something for nothing type of mindset that both of them fit into."

And his guest on the podcast where they discuss this together, Dr. Scott Esplin, agrees and expands:

"Here’s another possible connection. He said that signs come by faith. We talk about when someone commits adultery, we use the same term. They haven’t been faithful. Both are rooted in this commitment of faith that I’ve made a covenant and I’m going to be faithful to that. Covenant signs come by faith. When someone commits adultery, we say they haven’t been faithful. Even in our vernacular, even in our language as we talk, we connect them both to faith in one way or another."

 Attitude determines interpretive possibilities. It also determines meaning, purpose, and blessings. Signs come after faith because faith is the first principle of the Gospel that an omnipotent God atoned for our sins and will intervene for the growth of all who covenant with Him, who accept Him as their Savior. This good news puts us in a new state: a state of grace, a state of communion, a state of giving up our own will, even as He did, and finding life more abundant. It's a state of seeking oneness. And breaking it is unfaithful. Marital communion, the oneness of a new "we" replacing the "me" and the "you" that existed prior to the wedding vows and that the covenantal parties seek requires faith in the same way. We have to behave as if the becoming-one is true. We have to invest effort before the proof of the oneness is manifest. We have to take steps into the dark, building on common ground and expanding the ground that's in common before the blessings of the light are revealed.

Attitude determines interpretive possibilities. And this is why being faithful, hopeful, and charitable in putting the other's interests above your own allows you to grow in light, in love, in positivity, and in freedom together. Being one in heart is what Zion is made of. It's what the Lord prayed would happen for those that believe on His name--that they would become one even as He and His Father are one. And it's what makes every family a laboratory of faith. Because we seek oneness in faith, signs abound. Knowing they will abound--that we've been told they are logically connected in a causal relationship--doesn't remove the responsibility we have to act upon them, and doesn't diminish the test inherent in moving forward before the blessings arrive. Because it's not technically knowledge, but rather, more properly faith.

And the faithless--or rather the unfaithful--have an attitude preventing the possibility of faith's blessings, preventing oneness, preventing love, preventing liberty and power, preventing truth, preventing the Spirit. By choosing refusal to believe until X, they persist in the illusion that they are reasonable, honest, and open--even to the X they promise will convince them. Because their attitude determines their interpretive possibilities, and the refusal is the key defining element of their attitude, they can't even see that their very approach is fallacious, the very promise to believe when compelled by external evidence contains its own self-contradiction. They are set up for their own self-fulfilling prophecy--the signs don't come, and they remain unconvinced, but think it's for reasons. But from the outside, we can see that it is they who stand outside reason. They disallow evidence before it has a chance, and thereby fall prey to the larger delusion--that they are judging objectively at all. The material of the betrayal is different to that of adultery, but the thought process and scope of consequences stem from the same father of lies.

The Restored Church, in the 1830s as it still is now, has only ever had sinners as members. And the sins, if this Section is to be believed, ran as serious as sins of adultery, not merely bad attitudes toward the Prophet. I'm glad for a Redeemer capable of forgiving sin, and for commandments to avoid it. With the right attitude, that basic truth can make all the difference--seeing us through every challenge this mortal test can throw at us, and making us clean, whole, and eventually, potentially, consecrated enough for that oneness He promises. Maybe even on earth in a Zion society.

I'm working on my own attitude, and working outward beginning with my own family Zion, and beyond to my ward, community, and nation. The signs appear to be following my attitude.