Here It Comes Again (2)

Then ^[a^]he said to the people, “Go forward and march around the city, and the armed men shall go on ahead of the ark of the Lord.”  Joshua 6:7 NASB

He said – During the summer we encountered two American girls at a gelateria in Reggio Emilia.  Meeting English speaking Americans is still unusual enough to generate attempts to connect, and we soon learned that these girls were Mormon missionaries, stationed in Reggio.  They were both 19 and seemed a bit overwhelmed by their circumstances so we invited them to come to Parma for dinner.  We got to know them a bit better after that.  Last week one of them called me to ask if we knew about Jesus, in particular, the Jesus of the LDS church.  They were missionaries, after all, and they wanted to be sure we had the knowledge necessary to be saved.  I tried to be as kind as possible, inviting them to come with us to lunch and then spend some time talking if they wished.  That was yesterday.  After lunch they spoke about their faith.  I questioned them (only a bit).  Of course, like most young people who grew up in a faith, they were convinced they had the truth “as revealed by God,” and that their prophet, Joseph Smith, was called by God to correct all the confusion of the other “churches.”  That led to a discussion about how we know if a prophetic message is true or not.  And that led to epistemological confirmation (that is, how we know anything at all).  With serious expressions, both girls told me that the ultimate test of truth is the action of the “Holy Ghost” confirming the belief in an inner experience.  You can imagine what happened next.

Or probably you can’t.  You see, I agreed with them that ultimately one’s faith depends on an experience, but the meaning of the experience needs to be tested.  The experience alone might be enough if your faith is entirely personal and internal, but people live in community, and that means communicating your experience in ways that others can understand.  And, of course, once you do that, you open yourself to dialogue, in particular, to critical examination.  “I hear what you say but I need to know what you mean.”  That sort of question.  What was immediately apparent to me (but not to them) was that Joseph Smith’s version of religion contained all the same issues that face fundamentalist Christianity, that is, inerrancy, inspiration, prophecy, textual integrity, etc.  And not surprisingly.  Smith grew up in that faith world, and his extension and modification of the basic Western Bible story simply hauled along all those issues.  He wasn’t a theologian.  He was a storyteller.  He just used the Western Christian Bible as his drawing board.  Uncritically.  Inexpertly.  But perhaps compellingly—if you were naïve enough or you needed to believe in something absolutely certain.  Like most of us at age 19.

When the girls told me that an angel confirmed Smith’s vision, I asked how they could tell that Mohammed’s vision was wrong and Smith’s was right.  After all, I said, both men claimed to have had an angelic experience.  The answer, predictably, was that Smith was right and Mohammed was wrong because the Holy Ghost had told them so.  What a blissful place to be—all that’s really needed is what the Spirit tells me, no questions asked.  But if you start to ask questions, oh, well, then the world gets a lot more complicated—and you end up with oddities like Joshua 6:7 qere ketiv.  Slowly the Bible becomes a human document, not a set of hidden golden tablets.  Ah, but we all need to grow up sometime.

Topical Index: qere ketiv, Mormon, inspiration, inerrancy, Joshua 6:7