I recall sitting in church on the lap of my Grandpa Sabey. I cannot recall the time of year, but it was presumably cold outside that morning, because I recall how warm and comfortable I felt in the chapel, despite wearing a tie. Grandpa whispered “sweet nothings” in my ear during sacrament meeting–his own phrase, not mine, though “sweet nothings” is an apt descriptor, because the particular words are nothing while the sweetness of kind attention is all. Except that the particular words did matter in my case, because it was the whispered “s” sound that made a delicious tickling in my ear, and that was my secret reason for asking for more sweet nothings. I enjoyed singing the familiar songs and seeing the familiar faces. I don’t remember anything particular from that meeting beyond these details–but I do remember being touched by particular teachings and songs and testimonies in other meetings, even as a very young child.

Some of the stories I then found moving I now find problematic. For example, the heartbreaking parable of the older boy who takes the younger boy’s whipping for him after the younger boy steals the older boy’s dinner. As flash fiction, it is effective, and it nicely captures the competing demands of law and order on the one hand and pity for hungry bread thieves on the other. As an analogy for the Atonement, however, it is, I now believe, extremely dubious.

But overall, my initiation into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was sound in every way–a happy embrace by the tradition of my ancestors since the mid-nineteenth century, conveying God’s hope-giving truth and his loving expectations.

Touching stories and music and grandpas who whisper sweet nothings in the warmth of the meeting place is, of course, far from unique to my religious tradition. Perhaps every religious tradition is capable of providing legitimate spiritual experiences as well as aesthetic and social enjoyment. This presents a double problem—how to distinguish legitimate encounters with God/Truth within one’s religion from mere aesthetic or social enjoyment, and how to justify, beyond family loyalty or mere familiarity, a belief in the truth of one’s religion relative to other religions. This essay does not purport to have any definitive answers. It simply presents some of my own personal struggles and resolutions and reasons for belief.

Consider this Book of Mormon passage from Alma 32:

26 Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge.

27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.

29 Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.

This passage seems to me at once theologically profound, deeply pragmatic, epistemologically restrained, and beautifully simple. It distinguishes faith not from knowledge but from perfect knowledge. Faith in the gospel message is described, implicitly, as nascent knowledge that comes to those who desire it enough to act on it. (Only nascent knowledge could “grow up” into perfect knowledge.) Spiritual knowledge—faith—grows, little by little, out of this “experiment,” by way of recognizing that one’s soul has “begun” to be enlarged and one’s understanding “begun” to be enlightened, and the Word has “begun” to be delicious. One still lacks perfect knowledge of the truth of the message, but one’s faith is justifiably increased by the success of the experiment. One has begun to know.

The experiment begins with the “desire to believe.” Some might claim that this desire disqualifies the experiment by introducing bias at the outset. I disagree. Even double blind studies are conceived in hopes of confirming a hypothesis—generally a hypothesis connected to financial consequences for the parties who are funding the experiment. The desire for a given outcome does not inherently compromise the integrity of an experiment. And in our case, we have immense reason to desire a particular outcome. We earth-bound star-gazers, we who promise each other eternal love even as our hourglasses run towards death and our hearts retreat back into selfishness, we would-be symphony-writers with discord in our own souls and in our families, we heaven-dreamers who are tied, by our own Faustian bargains, to hell: we need supernatural aid like a man lost in Death Valley needs water, like a man falling from an airplane needs a parachute, like a newborn needs a mother or a prisoner some hope to cling to. We would be worse than deranged not to desire the deliverance the gospel claims to offer. But can it really deliver?

Our desperate need, while it does not invalidate the experiment, is an intellectual liability. What the man in the desert sees as water may be a mirage; the prisoner’s hope may be a false one; the baby may be temporarily satisfied with a binkie.

This is the background for the “experiment” that the text envisions. It is a whole-souled effort to test whether the gospel can really deliver, as promised, what we so deeply need. And we never know for sure, at least so far as these verses convey, until we have fully received the God-life promised by the gospel. But we begin to know just as soon as we begin to walk on the path that leads deeper and deeper into that life. We are like a man half-dead and almost delirious with thirst who is given a drink by a good samaritan and pointed in what he claims is the right direction out of the desert. As we stumble along, we begin to see more plants, then we trudge through a short stretch of what feels like moist sand, then we think we hear the faint tinkling of a stream ahead, even though at that particular moment the sand is bone dry and the plants nearly as few as ever. We are leaving the desert but not yet left; we are arriving in the wetlands but not yet arrived.

Alma’s metaphor of a plant growing in one’s heart is superior to this desert-to-wetlands parable, because the plants, moist sand, and tinkling streams I have just mentioned are really internal developments, not external signs. They are the slow dawning of spring in the soul.

It must be said, in passing, that I find it implausible that so profound, pragmatic, restrained, and simple a passage could have been invented by a calculating 24-year-old schemer with only the equivalent of a middle school education. That is the main alternative to the proposition that Joseph Smith translated the ancient engravings with divine help as he claimed. Some texts are too large, too deep, and too full to have come out of the cramped brain-spaces where petty and insincere souls act for their own selfish ends. If mature minds find, as they study a text, that there is more and more room there for them to stand and look up in admiration, they have some reason to trust that the text is a sincere attempt to convey something big that the writer has glimpsed. But more on the Book of Mormon as evidence later.

The inculcation of LDS teachings in my childhood was, as I said, overwhelmingly positive. It seemed to ring true that God is always, in all times and places, trying to give light and knowledge, but that his children are constantly rejecting it, preferring to walk according to their own desires. So also the teaching that our spirits came from God, our Father, and will return to him in the end, to remain there forever and receive all that he has if only we have learned to be the kind of person who would wish to remain there. The need for a Savior to intervene and fix and heal the human condition and each human soul seemed clear–to disentangle us from sin and death and darkened minds, to enable us to learn (but never to earn) heaven. Faith in Jesus impelling us to make the covenants and keep the commandments God has extended seemed the natural and fitting path to learning heaven, starting with the gate of our baptismal commitment to follow Jesus. When we step off that straight and narrow covenant path, then faith in Jesus, repentance, and making or renewing those covenants appealed to me as the natural and fitting response of a penitent soul. The commandments we are to keep seemed right and wise: of course we should keep our bodies free from addiction, donate a portion of our money to God’s earthly kingdom, direct our sexuality in productive rather than destructive channels, etc. Finally, it seemed only consistent with the merciful and gracious character of God that this path back to him–the covenants and commandments, with baptism as the gate–should be made available to all of his children, irrespective of whether they had had an opportunity to receive the gospel in this life.

Yet as a youth, like Joseph Smith, “though my feelings were deep and often poignant,” and though I too, in my own less marvelous manner “had seen a light,” I “fell into many foolish errors, and displayed the weakness of youth, and the foibles of human nature; which, I am sorry to say, led me into divers temptations.” My particular sins need not be detailed, except that the overall effect was that I was (again like Joseph Smith) “entangled . . . in the vanities of the world.” I saw myself, accurately, as inadequate and sinful, but I lacked sufficient practical faith and focus on Jesus to draw on his strength to disentangle myself. While I sincerely engaged in the religious life, including daily prayer and scripture study, and found enlightenment and comfort to a degree, I was mainly concerned with my own excellences and achievements.

I was, by no merit of my own, without the all-consuming perfectionism that drives some youths to high achievement and sometimes to suicide, but in my own less rigorous manner, I made my way to a moderate degree of success in academics, athletics, and music. Even my participation in the religious life was falsely colored by this self-regard. I was, to all appearances, an excellent “Mormon,” and was pleased to appear so. But in truth I was far from valiant in the gospel in which even then I sincerely believed, notwithstanding my many questions and doubts. Had my attempts to live the gospel been less feeble, I might have made a great difference for good in middle and high school. Perhaps I managed to accomplish something good–but how stunted was my contribution! And how stunted it still is!–but, thank God, much less stunted now than it was then, I think.

I recognized in some degree the wrongness of my life through the haze of pride and mingled self-regard, self-deception, and self-rejection. I recognized a holiness that I lacked but ferociously admired in the historical figure of Gandhi as portrayed (and perhaps beatified) by the 1982 film, and even more so in the fictional characters of Father Zossima and Alyosha from The Brothers Karamazov, among many other real or fictional individuals. It was the same holiness that I recognized at the core of Christianity in the life and teachings of Jesus. And it was a holiness that I saw in varying degrees in my church leaders and parents. The God who was born in a stable and kept company with lepers and harlots during his life was gracious enough to appear in my impure heart not infrequently–including, for example, during each annual performance of the Battle Hymn of the Republic during the high school choir’s end-of-year concert. Amusingly, I sang four different parts during the a capella men’s quartet of the third verse while I progressed through highschool and puberty concurrently–first tenor as a freshman, second tenor as a sophomore, baritone as a junior, and bass as a senior.

The vast majority of my spiritual experiences have been like this end-of-year concert—mediated by music or words, so that one might reasonably ask whether the Spirit was really part of the experience at all. Was it not just the beauty of the ideas and expression? Or, worse, was it not just the experience of things I have been culturally conditioned to perceive as beautiful?

I have had a small handful of experiences that assure me this is not the case: there is something more than aesthetics at work. The first I can remember occurred during my high school years. I was by myself in the evening after everyone else had gone to bed, reading the scriptures. I do not remember what I was reading, because the words were merely the unimportant background of the experience. All at once I felt growing within me a powerful sense of peace and wellness, as if wrapped in a heavenly blanket. There was quite simply no aesthetic stimulation associated with the experience, yet it was one of the most beautiful of my life—a message of light and love and hope to a struggling teenager. The feeling was so potent and so completely without explanation, so unconnected to what I was reading or thinking about or feeling, that it could only have come from God. The feeling reached and maintained a climax for several wonderful minutes and then faded gradually as dawn goes down to day, but I have never forgotten my little message of mercy.

Yet it was not until my two-year mission in Taiwan that I finally more fully awoke and aroused my faculties and gave my heart to the experiment. My time was devoted to other people and to God, and not to my own learning and development. My talents were no longer ends in themselves, but tools for God. I was studying the scriptures and praying longer and more often, and, much more importantly, my study and prayers had a new, practical focus on what would help particular individuals come unto Christ–individuals I was attempting to love as he loved. I experienced this shift as a liberation. It did not occur overnight. This shift in focus and attunement took the first half of my mission to take hold, and continued through the end of my mission. My last six months in Toufen, serving in a small branch (a congregation too small to be a “ward”), were without comparison the happiest six months of my life up to that point. As I testified about God’s love and redemption and the restoration of the gospel and invited everyone I could to repent and be baptized, I knew that what I was doing was right, felt utterly confident that the work was true. This did not feel at all like “the effect of a frenzied mind,” as Book of Mormon character Korihor puts it. Rather, it felt sure and steadfast and deep and solid. It was only when I was grumpy or when I tried to adopt an outside perspective and found I could not readily refute it that doubts haunted the edges of my consciousness.

My mission involved a wealth of beautiful experiences, with occasional truly miraculous experiences mingled in. One beautiful experience from early in my mission was playing the part of Angel in the Christmas pageant put on at the mission home. I think I was chosen mainly for my blonde hair. I stood on the roof in a white robe and spotlight while the narrator read in beautiful Mandarin, to a large crowd of Taiwanese people, “Fear not, for I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For to you is born this day, in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord.”

One of the occasional miraculous experiences occurred towards the end of my mission, as we taught a single man perhaps 30 years old. He was later baptized but immediately became inactive and stopped answering our calls. Yet he told me that he had a spiritual impression when he attended church for the first time. His own description of the impression, which he at least initially acknowledged as a message from God, was that this was “the only true and living church.” An intense thrill ran through me at hearing this. That is the exact phrase from LDS scripture (D&C 1:30), only he translated it better than the official Mandarin translation at the time, which was “the only true and existing church.” This discrepancy and loss of meaning had bothered me about the official translation, so when I heard the more correct translation (“true and living”) apparently revealed direct from Heaven to an investigator, I was at once exultant and astonished. I racked my brain for any possibility that he had heard that phrase in his first church meeting so that his spiritual impression would have been in the nature of a confirmation of truth rather than an original revelation—a much more common operation, in my experience. I had been with him essentially the whole time, and I certainly would have noticed any different translation of the phrase, so the possibility seemed remote. He was certainly aware of the claim that this was the “true” church, whatever that means, but I decided, and still believe, that the phrase “true and living church” was his own inspired utterance. I expect I will go to my grave believing this, even though he himself was not able to sustain the new lifestyle, beliefs, and conversion after his baptism and has doubtless forgotten the impression he shared with me.

I returned home from Taiwan with a conviction that was, compared to my pre-missionary testimony, deep and untroubled by doubts, but I was ill-prepared for civilian life. It seemed to me that after having become liberated from an excessive focus on self-development and enabled to spend my days talking about the beautiful truths of eternity, I was now being told to shift back into self-development mode–college–and to confine nearly all of my conversations to topics that were innocuous, comparatively meaningless, and politically correct. I could no longer act like a missionary, and I seemed only to create discomfort and resentment when I made any attempts at proselytization.

I survived spiritually the next five years until I got married, and even grew in many ways, not least by wrestling with many hundreds of texts in the course of my BYU English BA and MA degrees, but I can see in retrospect that those years were a comparative desert. My life remained more in keeping with the covenants I had made with God than it had been prior to my mission, and I continued to experience many poignant spiritual experiences as I sang in church choirs, prepared sacrament meeting talks, studied the scriptures and other inspired texts, attended devotionals, and had occasional deep conversations. But the doubts that had never been wholly banished from my mind, even during my mission, came closer again.

For example, I was reading somewhere about how Joseph Smith taught that the continents were not divided until the days of Peleg (roughly the time of the flood generation in the Bible). I knew that this teaching was not consistent with mainstream scientific understanding of geology, but I did not know geology well enough to judge the strength of the evidence that the continental plates had been drifting apart for millions of years. So I went to the geology department and asked the first geologist I found in his office whether he believed that the continents had not been divided until the days of Peleg, as taught by Joseph Smith. Without blinking, he answered no, they had been drifting apart for millions of years. He must have seen the stricken look on my face, because he quickly backtracked. “Well I guess it’s possible, but that would mean they moved at an incredibly fast rate of speed and then decelerated. Right now they are moving about an inch a year, so you would need to account for why they suddenly moved so fast just a few thousands of years ago and then why they slowed down again.” He did not offer any suggestions about what to make of Joseph Smith’s teaching. I thanked him for his time and went my way, but I was disturbed by the fact that Joseph Smith had taught something that seemed so implausible from the scientific perspective that even BYU geology professors who, in theory at least, believed in him as a prophet, rejected it without blinking. If that teaching was not true, then what of Joseph Smith’s other teachings?

Wisely, I think, I did not set out on a mission to understand or reconcile or decide between the scientific and the prophetic teachings. I still do not know the strength of the evidence supporting the slow and steady drift of the tectonic plates over millions of years. I understand that scientists consider it quite conclusive, supported not only by a well-established theory of tectonic drift but also by fossil records indicating when different land masses lost contact with other land masses and began to diverge on an evolutionary time scale in terms of the species whose bones were present in the sediment. I still do not know what to make of the prophetic teaching regarding Peleg, nor the flood narrative, nor the Eden narrative, all of which, if taken as literal history, seem quite irreconcilable with natural history as revealed by science–or rather, as understood by current scientific consensus. And they seem to present themselves as literal history, or at least that is how they have been understood for most of Christianity, including by Joseph Smith and most or all of his successors. I am well aware of the limits of science, but I am also convinced that it shines a bright light within certain fairly narrow fields of inquiry, including natural history. Within such fields, scientific consensus is not lightly to be disregarded. Prophetic teachings are also not lightly to be disregarded, but what is the test of whether a purported prophet is truly inspired by God if not how well those teachings hold up against hard empirical evidence when such is available?

That is a good question, and the answer, I think, is given by Jesus himself. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.” False teachings are certainly a bad fruit. That said, natural history is not the best sphere in which to judge. So many gaps in knowledge exist, as any scientist worth their salt will readily acknowledge. Materialistic assumptions inform the interpretation of the data, involving any purported scientific proof of even apparently material questions deeply in problems of circularity, to say nothing of spiritual questions. And no consequence for practical morality can ever hang on a properly scientific question–because morality is, inherently, utterly foreign and opaque to science (though of course not to scientists). For these reasons among others, science is the wrong tool for judging either the truth of spiritual teachings or the merit of a prophet’s legacy. These are best judged in the sphere of every-day life by the impact they have on people sincerely trying to follow that prophet in the manner dictated by the most enlightened interpretation of the prophet’s legacy. This test is obviously not amenable to any scientific process or even to any publicly accessible argument. Instead, Jesus’s test boils down to practically the same whole-souled test that Alma prescribes. What happens when the seed of the word is planted? No scientific instrument can detect whether heaven is drawn closer, no outside observer can confidently judge, but the sincere spirit where the word is planted and has begun to bear fruit can discern.

Still, when a prophet ventures into what appears to be scientific territory, and their pronouncements appear, by the best light science can shine, dead wrong, the believer who has staked so much on the truth of the prophet’s other teachings may be forgiven a feeling of unease. There are what I judge to be good philosophical proofs of the inadequacy of a purely materialistic conception of reality, but these proofs do not undermine the findings of science so long as it does not claim more than the evidence warrants, so I will not go into them here. Instead, I simply invite the reader to join me, with respect to Peleg and Noah and Eden, within a space of unresolved ambiguity.

What is most noteworthy for my purposes, however, is how my doubts appeared to me in the moments when faith burned bright. I would be at some meeting where I would hear the bearing of powerful testimonies and the sharing of sacred experiences of the power of God to redeem and bless. I have heard thousands of firsthand accounts of manifestations of this power in ways that are sometimes ordinary but beautiful, as when anger or fear drains out of the soul in response to prayer and healing comes, perhaps over years, resulting in a radiance of spirit that is awe-inspiring. And sometimes these manifestations of God’s power are extraordinary and miraculous, as when advanced cancer is healed through the fasting and prayers of an entire stake, leaving doctors thoroughly stumped, or when a Bishop gets a clear message from God in his mind to drop everything and go visit an obscure member of his ward, and he does so, finding the member just at the moment they are about to take their own life. There are doubtless hundreds of millions of these accounts, and when I would hear one of them and feel the burning faith of the speaker rekindle my own, I would feel like the prodigal son, welcomed home again despite my foolishness. My questions about Peleg etc. still seemed valid in the light of that fire, but the doubts that seemed so formidable as I walked into the meeting appeared completely insubstantial as I walked out. Whatever we are to make of the Eden narrative, God was real and he was active in our lives and utterly to be trusted and adored. Yet the fire would die down again and without its clarity, the shadowy doubts would creep slowly back towards me the very next day.

I noted a similar pattern in my relationships with my girlfriends during this period, both of whom broke up with me due to my inability to move forward towards marriage. I would vacillate between warm admiration of all the qualities that matter and ungenerous annoyance with minor ticks and foibles that do not, between deep attraction and shallow repulsion, between faith in the relationship and doubts—not doubts about the ultimate goodness of my girlfriend or even of the marriage that could be, but merely about whether I wanted the marriage. After all, there were other girls I found more attractive in this or that respect. This vacillation was deeply hurtful to each of my girlfriends in turn. I repeatedly gave them reason to understand that I loved them and believed in us and then backtracked without any solid basis or explanation to give beyond my personal preference. This small-souled pettiness and backsliding towards one and then another sweet, affectionate daughter of God was, I believe, offensive to their Father—and yet marriage is a huge decision, not unlike leaping off a cliff into water you cannot see but have been assured is deep. I could not bring myself to do it. Yet there was a powerful sense of clarity in the moments of faith and affection and commitment and a sense of confusion and darkness in my fearful backtracking from the ledge.

The first girlfriend got engaged just months after she broke up with me. I met the second girlfriend fairly soon thereafter, and the same unsustainable pattern started again. She broke up with me over the summer, but we got back together when the school year started–and the pattern continued. We decided she would serve a mission and I would wait for her, but the question of marriage was to wait till she got back. I was committed only to comfortable non-commitment towards her or anyone else for 18 months, and weekly letter-writing. With 18 months without the pressure of a decision that I found myself pathetically incapable of making, I hoped my soul might quiet down into a more grown up stillness and steadiness. At the beginning, it still looked impossible. I remember asking for a priesthood blessing from my dad. He laid his hands on my head and in the name of Jesus Christ blessed me to be able to move forward with marriage when the time came and to feel peace about it. After the blessing, he asked how I was feeling. I told him, nearly in tears, that I just could not imagine the blessing coming true. He said I may not have the faith to receive the blessing just now, but that was OK.

Eighteen months later, having kept my rather easy commitments, I was feeling much more optimistic as I prepared to visit her and her family. We had been ostensibly “dating” for the last eighteen months, but with no commitment to continue dating or to get married at the end of it. I told myself that I would not be proposing and I would certainly not be breaking up for at least one month, to allow us to get reacquainted before any decisions. But of course I was hoping that I would finally be able to move forward without falling apart like a scarecrow in a boxing match.

The visit started out well. We went to a Shakespeare in the park performance the first evening, where we began holding hands again. That felt amazing. She was jet lagged and I stayed up very late with her for the first couple of nights, talking. I was feeling great about the relationship. But the third day, for whatever reason, possibly mainly my own tiredness, I plummeted back to an uneasy, confused sense of shallow repulsion. It was not exclusively my tiredness, even if it was mainly that, because there really were little annoyances: this or that way of talking she had with her mom was off-putting to me, perhaps I found her outfit not particularly attractive, perhaps she was trying too hard to be funny. I honestly don’t remember the details, but I found the recurrence of the old feeling extremely distressing. I excused myself shortly after dinner, claiming I was tired. I went to my bedroom and prayed a long time. I remember nothing of whatI said, but over the last three years of dating her on and off, I had prayed thousands of times with little progress. Still I would experience the same emotional vacillation, and my negative affect seemed to depart from me only after I would speak of my emotions to her, effectively transferring them to her as hurt feelings. Here I was back on the same unsustainable roller coaster. I prayed a long time without any more progress thanI had achieved in my thousands of other similar prayers over years. It seemed hopeless. I slept eventually, and woke up around 2am. I got out of bed and began praying again. This was not the first time I had attempted to choose marriage in prayer, but I was so desperate to escape the cycle that perhaps I prayed more earnestly this time. I told God that I wanted to marry Dia Darcey and I pleaded with him to help me love her and show kindness instead of judgment when she seemed imperfect to me. I went further: I was determined to marry her unless God gave me some clear sign—not a confused negative emotional experience that appealed to my pettiness, but a clear message of light that appealed to what was noble in me. Absent such a message, I would marry Dia, and please help me to be a good husband to her.

I continued wrestling in prayer for some time, I have no clear recollection how long, but I finally got a clear response. I felt clearly that God was pleased with my commitment. I thanked him, joyfully, for helping me make the commitment and prayed again for help to keep it. And the sense of God’s presence grew stronger. All at once, I experienced a peace that was palpable. This included but far surpassed a cleansing of negative emotions until they were totally absent. It was an affirmative experience of utter wellness, of joyful rightness with God and with my own soul, of divine love and infinite hope. My prayer became one or pure praise and gratitude. Gradually the intensity of peace and joy diminished as if God were gently setting me back down on the earth. I was eventually able to go back to sleep. I finally had perfect clarity about Dia.

I still waited a month to propose marriage, but my mind was made up, and I have never looked back. The jump was still mildly scary, but I did not hesitate at the edge, and the water is deep as promised, and warmer than I dared hope. During the desert years between my mission and marriage, I used to think occasionally that it would be so nice and so easy to die in a car accident, rather than plodding ahead into the seemingly endless tomorrows. I was not suicidal, but I was not very happy. I am not always happy now, but my life is full with six beautiful children and a wonderful wife. I rarely think about dying now except as a theological event somewhere in my future that I hope will occur only after I’ve seen my children’s children grow up and live to make some difference in this world.

It was early in my marriage that some trouble about the Book of Mormon came to the fore. As I progressed through my English degrees and gained some philosophical and theological training on the side, I became more and more acutely aware that the theological and cultural issues that had been prominent during prior centuries had been mostly different from those highlighted in the Book of Mormon while those prominent during the nineteenth century were to a surprising degree the same as those in the Book of Mormon. It reads very much like an early 19th century American text mimicking the literary style of the 17th century King James Bible. At the same time, it has many ancient elements, including the ancient Hebrew literary form of chaismus, some implicit knowledge of ancient near-east culture and even the city of Nahom, unknown to archeology until the 20th century, together with an occasional theological or historical idea that feels truly ancient and utterly foreign to Joseph Smith’s context. (For example, the unison communal response of King Benjamin’s people to his tower sermon seems very foreign to the individualism of the post-enlightenment world, which American democracy took to new levels.) What to make of these facts?

To be clear, I have never read the scholarly arguments on either side, beyond those presented in By the Hand of Mormon and those I’ve picked up in religion classes at BYU or elsewhere. This is my own appraisal based on a close acquaintance with the Book of Mormon and a thoroughly imperfect knowledge of both early 19th century American culture and the ancient near-east world. Yet I am either just cocky enough or just informed enough to feel quite confident that my appraisal is accurate. And I have heard second-hand reports of similar claims by believing scholars.

What makes the most sense to me is that the 19th century elements are much easier for the believer to explain than the ancient elements are for the unbeliever to explain. From the believing perspective, the text was translated in the 19th century, and it is not surprising that it should ubiquitously bear the marks of that translation. It is eminently possible, and entirely valid from the perspective of mainstream translation theory, that some of the concepts in the ancient text might have been rendered so as to be more familiar and accessible to its audience than a word-for-word translation would have been. It also makes sense that a text envisioned by the translator as a companion to the Bible would attempt to adopt the literary style of the Bible and borrow wording from it where there was a near conceptual match. From the unbelieving perspective, though, where do the ancient elements come from if the text was invented from whole cloth in the 19th century?

Ultimately, though, scholarly arguments about the Book of Mormon are less important than Alma’s test of planting the Word in one’s heart by studying the text with a sincere and open heart and a desire to find and follow whatever is good and true. I have already expressed my admiration—awe, really—of the Alma 32 epistemology. I want to add now that I have studied the entire book closely over years and tried to live according to its teachings. Not all passages are equal to Alma 32 in profundity, and indeed I still find some passages exasperating for what feels to me like clumsiness in their relationship to the Bible or implausibility in their factual accounts. (Examples from my recent study: Why would the Nephites care that they were the “other sheep” Jesus had mentioned in the New Testament?–it seems like that passage was intended for the 19th-century readers who knew the New Testament and not the first-century Nephites who did not. That is fine, but it seems clumsily accomplished. Or, is it really plausible that in 22 AD, after being delivered from the Gadianton Robbers, “there was not a living soul among all the people of the Nephites who did doubt in the least the words of all the holy prophets”? Or that later in the same decade (29-30 AD), they would go to the opposite extreme, reverting en masse to wickedness, mostly in a single year, to such an extent that the church is almost entirely broken up and the society dissolved into tribes?) I would make three observations about these exasperating passages. First, the profound and beautiful predominates over what I perceive as the clumsy and bizarre–something I would also say of the Old Testament, by the way. Second, my perceptions of what is clumsy or implausible are not necessarily accurate. I see clearly the profundity, simplicity, and restraint of Alma 32 and numerous other Book of Mormon passages. There is no danger of a false positive there. In contrast, where I perceive clumsiness or implausibility, it may be because I do not see clearly, or because truth really is stranger than fiction—especially the fictions I might erroneously believe. And third, the exasperating passages are often among the most fruitful to wrestle with. They have often in my experience gone from exasperating to enlightening, with or without ceasing to be exasperating, and many things that used to bother me no longer do. The places where our perceptions and preconceptions are wrong are precisely those where we should expect to find the truth jarring. At the same time, we should not disregard our honest perceptions in blind preference for any text that is not infallible, which none are. And so we wrestle.

All in all, I judge the Book of Mormon to be full of solid truth. As literature, I prefer the Bible, which is generally more ambiguous, problematic, and nuanced, and therefore more interesting. But as a practical foundation for a Christian life, I judge the self-described “plain and simple” Book of Mormon to be unsurpassed.

As Teryl Givens points out, the Book of Mormon’s significance arises not only from what it says but from what it claims to be—new scripture, revealed by an angel and translated by the power of God, during the late 1820s. Indeed, he makes a strong case that this significance was its primary importance in Joseph Smith’s day. And this makes sense, because the claim of new scripture and present day prophets was and is earth-shattering from the perspective of mainstream Christianity. Protestants and Catholics mostly all concur with each other that events like the prophetic and apostolic ministries and the writing of the Bible belong to different eras than our own, that public revelation was concluded during those eras, and that the job of Christians and Christian churches today is to better learn and implement what God has already revealed during those eras, especially through the life of Jesus himself. They differ on whether church traditions have additional authority independent of the Bible and there are varying perspectives on private revelation, but they basically all agree that for nearly 2000 years, there has not been and will never again be any further scripture. Thus, any doctrinal development of their churches must be defined as a better interpretation of prior revelation but never as new revelation. Yet who can judge what interpretation is best but God? And if he is to judge, why may not he make his judgment known through public revelation, as he has in the past?

The LDS claim of new scripture and its anticipation of additional new scripture to be revealed comes along with a beautiful, simple, and elegant perspective on exegesis and doctrinal development. This is one of the places that LDS thought shines brightest, in my opinion. It does so in part by avoiding any hard rules of exegesis except one: that all teaching be guided by the Spirit. No scripture and no prophet is considered inerrant. All are subject to future correction or clarification. The canon is open: it is even an article of faith that “God will yet reveal many great and important things[.]” Historical and linguistic analysis is welcomed along with any other forms of scholarship, but the leaders of the church who have authority to receive revelation for the church are generally not scholars. They often inform themselves of what scholarship has to say, and I wish more of the laity who give talks in our Sunday meetings and lead our congregations would follow their example in this. But ultimately, scholarship is not the final authority, nor is existing scripture, nor is the current prophet. These all have their importance, but the only final authority is God, and his words are still forthcoming. Indeed, they never cease, and they are available to each of us, without mediation.

This openness to personal revelation and new doctrine and this appeal to whatever the Spirit of God might say rather than to extant scripture as the sole ultimate arbiter of truth might seem disorienting and destabilizing, but it is beautifully balanced in LDS teaching and practice by the hierarchical structure of the Church. Each person who has been baptized receives the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and if they are striving to keep their covenants, they have the right to personal revelation–but only for themselves. The bishop of a congregation has the right to revelation for that congregation. Only the president of the church has the right to revelation for the church as a whole. (This hierarchy defining the scope in which one has authority to speak and act for God, so necessary for God’s earthly kingdom to be a “house of order,” is closely related to the concepts of the “priesthood” and “priesthood keys” that we claim were restored through Joseph Smith.) Further, true revelations will never contradict past revelations: God does not contradict himself. This leaves plenty of interpretive room for doctrinal development, and even, given the fact that no scripture or prophet is inerrant, for rejection of non-core doctrines that appear to have been taught in obscure corners of scripture or prophetic teaching. But there is no place for flat contradiction of doctrines that are centrally taught in multiple ages and places in prior revelations.

I find the sheer elegance of this system stunning. It largely avoids the problems attendant to positing the primacy, or even the exclusive authority, of scripture. (How can scripture attest to its own truth? What can we appeal to when scripture seems to contradict itself? What changed to cause scripture to stop being written? What makes something scripture to begin with? Who decides how to interpret scripture, and what is their interpretation worth if they do not actually speak for God by revelation?) These problems are part of what justify Emerson’s observation: “It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.”

Only new revelation, it seems to me, can adequately cope with the very evident fact that the Bible is full of ambiguities, opening up numerous interpretive options sufficient to support the thousands of sects that have won sincere and well-informed converts throughout Christian history. That is the problem Joseph Smith faced: “[T]he teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible. At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James [i.e., James 1:5] directs, that is, ask of God.” And so he did–and the response to his prayer marked him as the prophet who would restore God’s priesthood and his earthly kingdom.

LDS theology posits that God has never altered his overall strategy for communicating with his children, despite large stretches in time and space where he declines to send prophets who, at the concerted urging of devils, institutionalized religion, and corrupt power, would be rejected and killed, thereby showing mercy both to the prophets and to their would-be murderers. Always he is speaking–before, during, and after the days of the apostles–and always he reserves the right to speak more, to individuals or to prophets, as he sees fit for the benefit of his children. Which writings of prophets or inspired scribes become canonized as scripture is, it may be, partly a matter of historical happenstance and partly a matter of divine intervention in history, but however it comes to be canonized, scripture remains open to clarification through revelation, not only through argumentation, and the canon itself remains open to addition and even, to a lesser extent, to subtraction. We are each privileged and obligated to learn to “hear Him.” We must obtain directly from him a witness of what individuals or institutions, if any, speak for him, and then, if any do, we must follow both the revelations he gives them and those he gives us. Yet the words intended to convey God’s message are always and inevitably imperfect expressions of his mind and are thus to be understood only by personal striving with the same Spirit who gave them. To say this is only very properly to subordinate what God is supposed to have said previously to what he wishes to say now.

What I love about this above all is how it allows for an organic, rooted, and ordered growth for individuals and for the Church. Just as the seed of the Word, if nurtured, grows into a Tree of Life within an individual heart, the Word as revealed to the Church can freely, naturally stretch its limbs wider and wider towards heaven as it grows more capable of receiving and metabolizing the infinite light that is perpetually shining down from a loving God onto a glorious but fallen creation. The Church treasures what it has already received even as it aspires to more and greater revelations. “And when they shall have received this, which is expedient that they should have first, to try their faith, and if it shall so be that they shall believe these things then shall the greater things be made manifest unto them.” 3 Nephi 26:9. This posture should result in an eager openness to all possible sources of truth, and for many of us it does, while others of us act as if all truth were already gathered in, viewing anything not published by the church with suspicion.

Like Jacob, we should wrestle with God, as individuals and as a Church, and not quit the fight until we obtain the next blessing, and the next. Extant scripture is not the receptacle of ultimate truth, but only the signifier pointing beyond itself to what it means. (This is how all words work, according to Saussure.) The written Word points to the Son, the incarnate Word, who points to the Father. Thus, scripture and inspired teachings are primarily a catalyst for personal revelation and growth in light. “That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day” (Doctrine & Covenants 50:24). That is LDS soteriology in a nutshell, as long as you remember that Jesus’s descent below all things is what enables him to be in all things and through all things the light of truth (see D&C 88:6-7).

I have had two experiences in recent years that have added strength to my testimony of the restored gospel as I move slowly through the experiment towards perfect knowledge. One was during the first general conference of the church with the current prophet, President Nelson. He is the fifteenth successor from Joseph Smith. The thirteenth, Gordon B. Hinkley, was the beloved prophet of my youth. The fourteenth was Thomas S. Monson, a very lovable and effusively loving man, whom, when he had been a young bishop, God would often prompt to visit widows in the hospital or to leave his meetings to track down youth missing from church, and his talks were full of these endearing and inspiring stories of ministering to the least of these. After his death, President Nelson took the helm, but he had never been a favorite of mine. His talks, it seemed to me, often focused on reaffirming fairly basic doctrine that I knew by heart. He was impressive, certainly, in his past career as a pioneering heart surgeon and father of ten, but not as beloved as the only two prior prophets I had personally known well. But during his first conference as the prophet, as he spoke during the priesthood session, I felt emanating from him a powerful sense of spiritual authority. Like my prior late night sense of being enfolded for several minutes in a heavenly blanket of peace, this experience was not prompted by anything in particular. As usual up to that point, I did not find his words especially interesting or moving. (Some of his subsequent talks I have found quite interesting.) I was not expecting anything exceptional from his talk. I had never received any particular witness of the prior prophets I had known and never expected or required one to sustain them as prophets, just as I fully intended to sustain President Nelson. But the witness came unbidden, out of the blue, powerfully affirming the new prophet’s authority.

The second fairly recent experience has been researching the stories of my ancestors who first converted to the restored gospel and generally gathered with the latter-day saints in Utah, which is largely how my next generations of ancestors came to be. I already knew from my childhood some of the most amazing stories, such as the conversion of Abel Evans, who was selected from his congregation to debate with the LDS missionaries, and who, after a successful first debate from which he received praise in the local newspaper as a “young man of promise,” fell silent during the second debate, became convinced of the message of the missionaries he was supposed to be debating, and immediately went with them to a river and was baptized, leaving behind a baffled audience and a father who suspected witchcraft, but who was quickly convinced himself and followed his son into the church. I also knew about Sarah Minton McMullen, who saw in a vision the two missionaries who would bring her the gospel so clearly that she recognized them when they appeared at her front gate and shouted for them to come in, after they had walked all day straight out of the county where they were serving without talking to anyone else and without knowing where they were going, just that they had to get there. But I had no idea how chock full my ancestry was of similar stories of faith and miracles related to their conversions to the restored gospel.

I did not know about George W. Brimhall, who saw a waking vision of himself crossing the Rocky Mountains to join the Latter-day Saints. I did not know about John Holladay, who sold his plantation and, according to one source at least, freed his slaves, and traveled in the “Mississippi company” with other Southern converts to join the Saints, reaching the Salt Lake Valley just a few days after Brigham Young’s company and going on to help found Holladay, Utah, which still bears his name. I did not know about J. Frederick Gfroerer, who, after emigrating from Germany and apprenticing as a plane-maker, used to talk to his roommate about the religious camp meetings his roommate would attend most nights, and who exclaimed, “This time you have found the truth” when he heard about the teachings from an LDS meeting. I did not know about Mary Bone, who received a heavenly messenger to comfort her while she was dying of breast cancer and struggling to care for all the children of her three daughters who had died one after the other after they settled in Lehi, Utah. And examples could readily be multiplied.

One of my favorite Bible passages is the final chapter of Luke. Jesus has just been resurrected as the chapter opens with women coming to the tomb with spiced oil to anoint his body. Angels tell them that Jesus has risen and remind them that Jesus told them this would happen back in Galilee. They tell the apostles what the angels told them, but the apostles do not believe them. Still, Peter goes and verifies that his burial clothes were folded and laid out in the sepulcher. Then we have Jesus appearing to his uncle Cleopas and another disciple as they walk to Emmaus, who are filled with sorrow because the one they thought to be the messiah had now been killed. They tell him what the women said they heard from angels and what Peter saw, but their sorrow shows they do not believe Jesus is actually risen. Jesus rebukes them for their slowness of heart to believe, and teaches them from the scriptures that Jesus was meant to suffer and die and enter into his glory. Their hearts burn as he teaches them, and they are finally enabled to recognize Jesus as he breaks bread with them, and then he vanishes. One wonders what they did with the bread Jesus had just broken–did it remain untouched on the table as they leaped up and began to run the seven dark miles back to Jerusalem in a shorter and more companionable reprise of the original marathon, eager to gasp out their “nike!”? Did they stuff it into their rucksacks to eat on the way? It seems the faster of the two must have decreased his pace to accommodate the slower so that two witnesses could attest to what they had just experienced. They arrive together, gasping, and burst into the room where the apostles are hiding. They declare that Jesus really is risen and describe their encounter. And at that very moment, Jesus himself appears in their midst and greets the apostles. Now at this climactic moment, how do the apostles react? They have seen him raise others from the dead. They have heard from multiple women that angels met them at Jesus’s tomb and announced he was risen, and their story was partially corroborated by Peter. They have just heard from two men whom they know and trust claiming that Jesus himself appeared to them and rebuked them for failing to believe what the women said and what the scriptures and he himself had prophesied would happen. And now Jesus himself has appeared. Presumably now they would joyfully recognize the truth. But no, they are terrified! They think he is a ghost. Jesus makes them touch him to reassure themselves that he is not a ghost. And then this very interesting statement: ”[T]hey yet believed not for joy.” Despite having almost every possible proof that Jesus had risen, the apostles could not accept it at first, precisely because it seemed too good to be true.

That is surely one of the great challenges for beliefs, perhaps the greatest for those who are sincerely trying to follow the example of Jesus. Is it not too good to be true that we will be raised to heaven after death to caress our departed loved ones and meet our grandparents and great grandparents in their prime and live in God’s presence forever in glory? Can the most hopeful, happily-ever-after story ever told really be more than a story? Surely, some skepticism is warranted at the outset. But recall what I said at the beginning of this essay. That is precisely what the experiment is for— to test whether the gospel can really deliver what it so outlandishly promises in fulfillment of all our highest and deepest longings. It is not so implausible if sufficient power and goodness are united in one being, and that being is our Father, whose work is to share his life with us. That is what Jesus taught, and I believe it.

I believe in the restoration of Jesus Christ’s church and priesthood authority and the fullness of his gospel, with all its astonishing promises, because the doctrine makes glorious sense to me; because I have heard the testimonies of many others that ring true and pure as Christmas bells attesting that God has made known to them its truth; because my ancestors were drawn to the restored gospel through persecution and unimaginable hardship by God’s grace and countless miracles; because my daily and weekly habits of scripture study and prayer and church service are a wellspring of goodness in my life; because I find the Book of Mormon to be full of light and the unbelieving theories for how it was written to be implausible, and because of sacred experiences that attest the reality of a loving God who answers prayers and the spiritual authority of Joseph Smith’s most recent successor. In short, I have tried the experiment, and the Word I have planted in my heart has enlarged my soul and enlightened my understanding and become delicious to me. Or, in other words, my homeward journey is underway.

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Of course, this essay leaves unsaid most of what could be said. Many would doubtless object to its failure to address this or that issue or argument for or against, but selectivity is of the essence of writing anything that is readable. Here are some of my favorite religious talks/books/passages/music for further study and, I hope, discussion..

Forgiveness, by President Gordon B. Hinkley

Sunday Will Come, by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin

Two beautiful statements of God’s mercy and healing and the fellowship of disciples even in the wake of war–one by Elder Perry and one by Elder Esplin.

His Grace is Sufficient, by Brad Wilcox

Hebrews 11 – “strangers and pilgrims” seeking “a city that hath foundations” – awesome.

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis – not an easy text but very profound. Ideally, read The Four Loves in preparation.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky – expresses the moral beauty of Christianity as well as any text.

Unspoken Sermons, by George MacDonald – powerful sermons on God’s simply loving relationship to man and man’s more complex and troubled relationship to God

Scripture Reading & Revelation by Dallin H. Oaks (affirming the multiplicity of meanings within scripture and the necessity of interpreting them: “The question is not whether or not one shall add to the word of the scripture . . . but whether such addition shall come by the wisdom of men or the revelation of God.”)

The Annual Messiah Sing Along – if you are in the Denver area, join us for a joyful musical celebration of Jesus that is always one of my Christmas-season highlights.

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, arr. Mack Wilburg – the men’s entrance in the third verse is one of the great moments in choral music

Battle Hymn of the Republic, arr. Mack Wilburg – the arrangement the combined choirs performed annually at Arapahoe High School

George Herbert, Love (III)

Hopkins, God’s Grandeur

Leslie Leyland Fields, Let the Stable Still Astonish