Dealing with the fallout

A lot of time has passed since my previous post, and a huge range of emotions. I'll try to keep it succinct, but I think if I take time to write more frequently I might find it helpful.


The last week in January, Jack's sister called a meeting to bring our situation out into the open, with the hope that it would eliminate questions and gossip sneaking around the family. His parents were out of town, but all of the (7) children came, along with 3 spouses, I being one of them. 


Jack read a statement he'd written so he could be clear, stating that we'd basically lost our ability to believe in the church, but that we love our children and our family and hope they can respect our decision. That took about 2 minutes at the most. 


The next part is really a blur for me. We were there for at least another half hour, if not longer, and they started asking a few questions. The very first question was, "Do you wear garments anymore?" What a stupid question. They asked if we were still going to church, and if I was still primary president. When I said yes, and that I wasn't ready to step down yet, things got really hairy. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of me crying that made no difference to their ability to yell in my face, and me somehow saying something one of my sisters-in-law found offensive, or maybe she did. I wasn't sure.  


Frankly, I can't remember anything between the first question and leaving besides about 3 sentences and the memory of my family (that I married into) shouting at me while I was breaking down. It's probably for the best that I've forgotten it.


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I wasn't actually ever going to post about that meeting, since it's really best if we just move on, but since my blog is really just for me, and I don't expect any of my in-laws to read it, I opted to post it because it's caused some serious long-lasting anxiety for me. This is the first bit of fallout I'm mentioning: anxiety.


It wasn't just that one incident that's been a nice catalyst. There have been a few emails or phone calls or whatever that furthered it along. There have been good moments with family along the way, too, and I'll post those as well, since they're important and precious to me. But it's the absolutely heartless comments that I can't understand that seem to find a permanent place in my subconscious, though I tend to consider myself a pretty forgiving person.


I know Jack is from a pretty passionate family. He, himself, is quite passionate. He doesn't really get angry with me, though he did from time to time our first few years of marriage, but he's mellowed out. When Jack's stressed, he's a little more prone to anger. When I'm stressed, I'm prone to internal self-degradation. It's a bad combination, so we try to be aware of the issue and only let one of us stress at a time, or do things to alleviate that stress. We actually do a pretty good job. And we get along splendidly.


Enter our present sphere. He's stressed, I'm stressed. Something stupid goes wrong and he's angry. And I'm withdrawn. And I can't deal with him being angry like I have been able to for the last 10 years because all I can think about is how I felt that miserable night a month and a half ago. I'm reliving it in my mind. They must hate me to treat me that way. How could they hate me? What have I done so wrong? 


And, actually, I have a lot more anxiety on a daily basis than anytime in the last 10 years.


This is pretty big fallout for me. I realize I need to get this under control, since it's self-destructive. It's not so out of control that it's affecting how I treat my family or that I'm depressed or anything serious like that. But it's enough that it hurts on a daily basis now.


I've started yoga, and I think I'm going to spend a little time each morning with that. It seems to help quite a bit.
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The next bit of fallout is my inner peace and spirituality. I lost my path, and now I have to make one all from scratch. I'm not really interested in someone else's dogma at this point, since that's what got me here in the first place, but setting everything up on your own is a daunting task for me. There are pieces I've learned from church over the last 35 years that I want to keep, pieces I want to lose. 


The thing is, this is very tied back into the whole anxiety thing. I know if I can maintain that peace (I'm not without it, but I'm not doing enough on a regular basis to keep it constantly), I can lose a lot, and certainly enough, of the anxiety. 


But where do I start? Prayer works for me. Some who have come to this point the way I did are agnostic or atheist and may think prayer is silly, but my thought is that if it has always brought me peace in the past, then why should it not bring me peace now, whether I have answers to questions about the nature of God or not? And it does, but I'm not always sure what to pray for anymore. I don't have the same set of beliefs as before, and I'm not even sure what exactly I do believe now. Not to mention my lack of trust in anyone telling me what I should believe. It's just something I have to work through, and it, unfortunately, takes more time than I'd like.


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This next bit is obvious: family relations. (I'm just talking about Jack's family in this post, because mine will get its own mention another time, as the situation is different and more unresolved right now.) Jack's parents are still out of town, but his mom has made it clear she loves him but doesn't really... I don't know. Doesn't like him, maybe? Jack has worked through some things with some siblings, and I had one send me a very nice email that I'll always remember late in the night after the family meeting. But I feel estranged, and even though I shouldn't care what anyone thinks, I wish I knew more decisively what they do think. 


Jack has two brothers that have been the exception: one goes to church sporadically, the other hasn't been in 12 years. The one that hasn't been in ages is married to a lovely woman who isn't LDS and has been a very supportive and dear friend these last couple of months. Well, much longer than that, but this has deepened that relationship.


Again, this is something that only time can fix. And people wanting to do the right thing, which I think we all do.

Thoughts on Polygamy

Last night I had a hard time falling and staying asleep. After writing yesterday's post, I was too disturbed from going over in my head everything I've learned about polygamy in the early Church. I hadn't even mentioned everything I knew.


For example, John Taylor, the third president of the Church, received a revelation in 1886 stating that the principle would, essentially, be in force for good now that it had been returned to earth. Also that too many people were neglecting to practice it. He doesn't use the precise term polygamy or plural wives in the revelation, though, so LDS scholars debate the importance of this revelation as pertains to polygamy. LDS Fundamentalists see it, however, as a declaration that polygamy will never go out of style again, not so long as man wants to enter into the highest degree of glory in the Kingdom of God.


Remember how I said one of the few things I had learned previously about the history of polygamy was that Joseph Smith was reluctant to practice the principle until an angel came with a sword and threatened to ruin him and the church if he didn't get going on it? Well, that's actually what he told several women when he introduced them to polygamy, that unless they married him his soul and the restored gospel was at stake. (I don't know if the angel said you have to marry 30 women or it's not enough, otherwise I would think telling one girl and getting one extra wife would be satisfactory. Seriously, how many wives do you need?) Anyhow, quite the pickup line. So apparently the angel visited him and told him the same thing before he approached each future wife.


At one point, Heber C. Kimball reprimanded missionaries for going away, converting, and choosing wives before they ever made the trip to Utah. Apparently this was an unfair advantage, as they could choose the prettiest for themselves before introducing the new converts to the church as a whole. I would pray for ugliness.


What's really haunting, though, are the stories. These aren't the pioneer stories we hear at church, and, in fact, I've read very few of them. The ones I have read, though, break my heart. Women disgusted with a system where close relatives marry, or young girls marry old men. Women who hated their husbands for what they'd turned their lives into, but had no way out.


Wives whose husbands died weren't given a choice what to do afterwards if Brigham Young decided they were to marry him, as in the case of Zina D. H. J. S. Young, who was married to a husband when Joseph Smith married her, then told she was to be married to Brigham Young after Joseph Smith died. Not only did she not get a say (though she was very devout and maybe willing to go along with it all), but her original husband loved her and mourned for her all his life.  This is what she said of polygamy:


Polygamist women "expect too much attention from the husband and . . . become sullen and morose. . . ." She explained that "a successful polygamous wife must regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for love we regard as a false sentiment; a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy."


I know. Sign me up. Who wouldn't want eternity with a perfect situation like that? I also found this story (page 147 if the link doesn't take you there). Clearly things weren't peaches and cream, and I should never have assumed they were. 


Somewhere in the back of my brain all these years I'd had this notion that sister wives shared work and children and learned to get along, since that was the way things were, and loved their husbands as well. And that their husbands were generally their same age. These stones I'd turned over told a different story, a very sad story that kept me up at night. Faithful, devout women willingly followed their leaders down unchangeable paths to lonely lives.


We're supposed to remember our legacy of faith in the Church. We're taught our history from Joseph Smith's birth until the saints reached Utah, and then more about other converts making the journey. We're taught about when Joseph Fielding Smith told us to have family home evening and Lorenzo Snow told us to pay our tithing. Heber J. Grant told us to work hard and keep the Word of Wisdom. And then we talk about today. But we always skip over those ugly polygamy years. We never hear those stories. I never did, anyhow. It's all so sad to me.


One last thing. Everything in the Gospel that has made me a better person has always inspired feelings of the Spirit within me. This was what I called my testimony. My belief now is that anything that brings you closer to God, within or without the Church, will inspire those feelings. But I never, never felt anything remotely sweet about polygamy. I didn't grow up hating it or thinking it was the worst thing on earth, but if it was such an important part of the eternal Gospel, I should have felt something good about it. The question is: who has?

Digging Deep: Seer Stones and Polygamy

At this point, I knew I'd reached the end of believing in most LDS doctrine. Here's the logical fallout:


If Joseph Smith didn't translate the Book of Abraham from the papyri, which he specifically stated he did, even kind of closely, he was not a prophet. Right? If he was not a prophet, then none of the restored gospel was actually a restored gospel, just one man's views on what a correct religion should be. Which means, especially, no priesthood, no doctrinal theology exclusive to Mormons (like the Word of Wisdom), and no temple ordinances. For days and weeks I looked for a good argument around that. Could he have been a prophet and just made a mistake? 


I really didn't want to make an error here and ruin my eternal salvation. I needed to investigate the prophet of the restoration in an objective way. In my digging, I decided to look at Joseph Smith's character based on his actions and words that were recorded by people who believed in him. Again, I chose careful sources to read. Documented, not embittered sources who stated facts that could be found in multiple places. 


First, the seer stone issue. There is not a single source that testifies Joseph Smith ever used the gold plates in the translation process. Sometimes there was a curtain drawn between him and the scribe, sometimes not, but no gold plates were ever stated to be in the room. Sometimes they were stated to definitely not be in the room. Instead, Joseph Smith used a seer stone, usually placed in a hat, to view the translated text. He said that he would see a segment of the Reformed Egyptian and then the translation in English next to it. 


Let's examine the issues I have with this.


1. If this is the case, why aren't we taught this history? Is it something to hide? It's clearly a more mystic method than just the thought of God giving him the light in his mind to understand the symbols, and we're taught that anything mystic is of the devil, so that's a bit of a conundrum and a good possible reason to hide this truth. Should we believe in mysticism, then, as good Latter-day Saints? Or only if it's from our prophet? That's how Joseph Smith started into this work. And, by the way, the LDS Church apparently still has this seer stone in their possession (see here, footnote 20, JFS). I guess it's what made Joseph a seer?


2. Apparently he didn't use the Urim and Thummim for translating the majority of the time, which can also be called seer stones of sorts. He used them for a while, but then returned to a stone he found in a well long before he got the plates because it worked better for him. And no, I'm not documenting all of this as I go along because that's not the point of this blog and you can do your own research. It's all over the place. But just comment if you need to know where I got any information. 


3. This seer stone he used for translating the Book of Mormon was the same one he used on several occasions to help others try to locate buried treasure to dig up, a common practice at the time because of old stories passed around. He was never successful. (There are court records stating he was a glass-looker, from when he was charged for falsely claiming he could find treasure. Somewhere between 1826-1830.) So if the seer stone works for revelations, why wasn't he able to get any treasure? If it doesn't, why did he use it to write the Book of Mormon. Confusing? Yes. A little infuriating, actually. Still, not grounds for dismissal by itself.


Next I decided to enter into the unpleasant research of polygamy in the Church. I've never cared for this doctrine, along with many other members, but had just chosen to ignore it, so I didn't know the full history. This is the whole of what I'd been taught: Joseph Smith had been given a revelation that said he needed to teach and practice polygamy, but he was reluctant (out of his love for Emma, most likely). He neglected this practice until an angel came with a sword and threatened to destroy him and take the church from his hands or the earth unless he started practicing it. Also, some women were sealed to him after he died.


So, to test my knowledge, I began reading. I'd accidentally stumbled upon this gem of a story in my early searching, but it seemed not only sensational but too unreliable to trust, so I hadn't weighed it in my earlier evidence against Joseph Smith. It's probably that article that got me thinking I should return to the topic. (By the way, there is insufficient evidence to absolutely state that Lucinda Morgan Harris was one of Joseph Smith's plural wives.)


Here's some of what I discovered:


1. Joseph Smith was married to between 28 and 53 women while he was alive (depending on the source), Emma Smith being one of them. There are records of marriages and sealings on the Church temple records, as well as affidavits by early members of the Church. Emma denied to her dying day (including on her deathbed) that Joseph Smith was engaged in polygamy, and stated, 

No such thing as polygamy, or spiritual wifery, was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband's death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of...He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have.

She said she learned about it from Orson Pratt's 1853 book The Seer, 9 years after her prophet-husband had died.


2. The reason Emma Smith could possibly have been justified in saying this is that polygamy was only practiced in secret during Joseph Smith's lifetime, and by very few, and Joseph Smith publicly declared it to be a false doctrine several times to the general public. This statement was published in the Times and Seasons in October of 1842:

All legal contracts of marriage made before a person is baptized into this church, should be held sacred and fulfilled. Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in the case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.

3. Some of Joseph Smith's plural wives were already married to other men when he told them he'd been commanded by God to marry them. By some, I mean at least 5. He also "tested" some of the Twelve by commanding them to let him marry their wives. When they finally agreed, he would tell them he didn't need to, but he'd needed to see where their loyalty was. (I always wondered why Brigham Young was known for doing things like this later and always found it despicable.)


4. Many of Joseph Smith's wives were teenagers when he married them, the youngest being Helen Mar Kimball, who was told she was ensuring the exaltation of all of her family. She was 14 and Joseph Smith was 37 at the time. Several other wives were 16 or 17 when they were married to him. Some were much older.


5. Some of Joseph Smith's plural wives were married to Brigham Young or other leaders in the Church once they traveled to Utah.


6. The general membership of the church was unaware of any revelation on polygamy until Brigham Young announced it at a general priesthood meeting in August of 1852. He said he had a copy of the 1843 revelation declaring the principle, but that the original had been burnt by Emma Smith, who he said was against the practice. 


7. Some LDS historians believe the revelation was actually given in 1831, which more comfortably precedes any polygamist actions by at least two and maybe seven years. However, this controversial (and as yet, to my ability, unsubstantiated) revelation declares that the leaders of the church ought to be marrying the descendants of the Nephites and Lamanites through the use of polygamy.


So, did Joseph Smith actually declare a revelation or write one down somewhere, or did Brigham Young pull one out of his hat to continue the practice that had begun? Why were so many 16 year olds the ones chosen of the Lord to be given to Joseph Smith? Why did he keep them all secret from Emma, especially when the 1843 revelation states that the first wife has to accept them (but also states her soul is damned if she doesn't)? Why did they all have to be secret when the members had already proven they would follow Joseph Smith and his teachings through anything? There's one story of Emma catching Joseph Smith "in the act" in the barn, and another letter of Joseph's (that was supposed to get destroyed) to one of his other wives, telling her to come over secretly that night if Emma was gone. Debatable evidence, but believable with the picture as a whole.


It was allegations of polygamy that led to Joseph Smith's death at Carthage. Someone had printed it, Joseph ordered that printing press to be destroyed, then Joseph Smith was arrested. 


Between the seer stones and the ugly mess of polygamy, Joseph Smith's character was obvious to me. He was obviously a religious man, raised in a family that believed strongly in God and in the Bible, but he got carried away with his own mysticism and power until it destroyed him and many lives around him.


I didn't wonder if there was a way for him to have messed up with the Book of Abraham anymore. That argument never made sense to me in the first place, but I felt the need to cover my bases. It's very emotional to decide against all you've ever been taught: temple sealings for eternal families, a prophet that speaks for God and guides us (nothing against the good, humble men who lead the Church today... most of them are just teaching us to be nice to each other and love God anyhow), an extra book that teaches us about Christ's ministry in the Americas, the comfort of knowing some of what was in store when we reach heaven, and what's going on there now. 


I was willing to give it up because I'm a firm believer in knowing the truth, but it was like being cut in half. Emotionally, that's what it felt like. So I dug deep. And I cried. And Jack and I talked a lot. And it was okay, even if it still hurt.

Grant Palmer

Christmas, honestly, was difficult. I'd just finished questioning my belief in God the Father and concluded that I still had deep faith in Him. The love I've felt from Him my whole life may be explained away by an atheist as an evolutionary good feeling designed to give us peace, but there was too much feeling on my part to believe that.

As further evidence, and because I've had siblings die that I've been sealed to in the temple (which was not something I could validate any longer), I started reading about near-death experiences. There are several doctors who have done serious studies on the matter, and some pretty indisputable experiences by the experiencers, witnessing things out of their body they couldn't have seen otherwise, learning things in the next sphere they had never known here on earth but were verified later. As sensational as looking to those experiences may seem, they brought me great comfort, and were certainly no more sensational than looking into a 14-year old boy having visions.


One thing I noticed in many lengthy NDE's was that the patient was met by family who had already died. This made sense, of course, that they would be with their loved ones in the next life. With or without a temple ceremony.


As far as our research goes, the next step we took was to borrow a copy of Grant Palmer's book, An Insider's Guide to Mormon Origins, from the library. He was the initiator of the speculative "Golden Pot" theory, and I wanted to check his sources on some things, which I knew could be found in his book. Palmer also seemed very anxious to continue going to church, having a lot of respect and love for its teachings. That sounded like me.


The first chapter in his book, which was in no way ever inflammatory but calmly written and very carefully documented, explained how the papyri Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Abraham, part of the Pearl of Great Price, had been found in nearly its entirety and translated by modern Egyptologists in 1968. The translation can in no way be matched to Joseph Smith's translation. It is completely different, and the papyri are, in fact, funeral texts for Hor or Horus, who was presumably the mummy the papyri were originally discovered with. Apologists have little to offer as possible explanations, especially as Joseph Smith was so specific about labeling the three facsimiles, and also because Joseph Smith stated that the papyri were the written by the hand of Abraham. The papyri were determined (within and without the LDS church) to have come from a time period 1500-2000 years after the time of Abraham.


While the rest of the book is excellent reading, especially all of Palmer's well-researched ideas on how the Book of Mormon was written, the first chapter was the complete deal-breaker for me. I'd had questions to that point, serious doubts that probably would have been enough, but this was fact. I'm a logical being. Faith is important, but it doesn't contradict science, which is what would have been required here. (At least my faith doesn't, but I don't require God to have created the earth in 144 hours in order to believe in Him.) In essence, my testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet, and any possibility of it ever returning, was gone for good.


By the way, this book is easy to find at a lot of libraries, Amazon, my house, and (for the first two years of its published life) Deseret Book.

By Study, Part 2: Swedenborg and Recycling Stories

While my testimony and heart seemed to be cracking in two, I continued to read. Truth had to be the most important thing. Joseph Smith taught that we should seek learning by study and also by faith, which I was doing. I devoted so much time to studying from what I felt were well-documented, reliable sources, and prayed fervently that somehow all of these things could be reconciled and the Gospel as I'd been taught it could still be true.

The next thing I looked into was the possibility of Joseph Smith borrowing material from other sources. Clearly this was more speculative research, since anything I discovered would not be provable, but the purpose of this was to see if there were strong similarities between Joseph Smith's writing and the likelihood of his coming in contact with these other source materials.


Emanuel Swedenborg wrote several books on the nature of heaven in his lifetime, which were fascinating and convincing to many. He had many followers while alive and after he died (in 1772). Though he lived in Sweden (shocking, I know, given his name), his teachings had a strong following in the U.S.


Swedenborg had very different views than Joseph Smith on the makeup of the Godhead, as well as many other things, but he did advocate that there are three heavens, the highest being called the Celestial. The celestial heaven is divided into three parts, and you must be married to attain the highest heaven. There is a spirit world (or world of spirits) before entering into heaven. Additionally, little children who die go directly to heaven.


Joseph Smith had opportunities to learn about Swedenborg. As I said already, he had a wide following, so there could possibly have been followers in his general area. Notably, Johnny Appleseed, originally from Massachusetts, was a follower and missionary for the Swedenborgian Church, dropping information about him off wherever his travels took him. It doesn't take much effort to believe that if  a humble man from Massachusetts who was familiar with Swedenborg during the same time period, a humble man from upper New York would have learned the same information.


D. Michael Quinn, an ex-communicated historian who still believes in the validity of the LDS Church, discovered that a summary of Swedenborg's book was in the Palmyra library from 1817. (see here, footnote 27)


More information on Swedenborg and the relations to Joseph Smith's ideals, from an apologist, can be found here.


Further possibilities for Joseph Smith to have borrowed ideas include "The Golden Pot", a story from E.T.A. Hoffmann. I found this page, which I thought was very curious. The section entitled "The Cumorah Cave and The Golden Pot" surprised me. For one, I'd never heard that Joseph Smith claimed he'd seen a whole cave of treasure, just a lot of gold plates with the sword, Urim and Thummim, and Liahona. Though there are similarities between the stories, spelled out here, it wasn't the similarities that stuck with me; it was the new information on how Joseph Smith had described Moroni and early visitations from him, as well as the cave. It was all so disturbing for me.


I don't know that there's any real credit to the "Golden Pot" theory, but researching it just seemed to open more room for skepticism. Joseph Smith seemed to be more fond of telling stories in his early days than I realized. What did this mean?


For me, my faith was shaken completely. I didn't know that I could believe anything he'd said or written. But if I'd trusted him for so long, then what else was I wrong about? Did God exist and love me? Did He care, even if He does exist, what goes on with my life?


Fortunately, my faith had always been more centered in my Father in Heaven's love than in any earthly doctrine, because I'd felt it from a very young age, and continually throughout my life. Though I had serious questions about His existence, they were gone within a day. I wrote the following in an email to Jack:


"God in Heaven exists. He loves me. He watches over me. He speaks to me. I don't care if I do or don't become exactly as He is, and I've never cared about whether or not I can become a god. I do want to be more like Him. If you look at mankind, those that are happy or at peace are trying to emulate the attributes I believe are part of Him: goodness, truth, patience, compassion. I realize that if I were completely frustrated and decided against the Church, I would leave behind my pathway to be more like Him. Just as reading scriptures and praying on a daily basis help me in this quest, attending Church reminds me to do those things that are most necessary."