Last week I went over racism in the Book of Mormon, in the text itself. While we did find human bias and prejudice, we did not find actual racism, as we define the term today. The week, I am going to come at the same topic from a different angle.
How do we read the Book of Mormon?
I want to sidetrack away from the Book of Mormon itself, and I want to look at it a little bit more abstractly, covering three different ways of looking at the origins of the Book of Mormon:
- That it is literally true, the idea that definitely happened.
- That it’s a revelation from God; it didn’t really happen, but it still came from God.
- That Joseph Smith completely made it up.
I think that having these three perspective really plays in deeply into how one is going to read the text.
1. Like It Really Happened
Let’s say that the Book of Mormon is literally true. I’m not going to lie, I do struggle with this one. I don’t want to say there’s no archaeological evidence that the Book of Mormon did happen in the American continent somewhere. I think that, first off, there hasn’t been enough archaeological work done. And second off, I think that there’s enough things there that kind of hint that it might be true that people lean into this camp. However, I think it’s a little bit fundamentalist to do so claiming exaclty where it happened. I also don’t like seeing people argue over where the Book of Mormon took place because we just don’t know. I am not myself a Book of Mormon literalist. I do believe that it happened, but I am not convinced everything played out as it is written (I feel the same way about the Bible), nor am I convinced it happened on the American continents.
How I Read the Text
That said, I read the book as if it really happened. It is scripture for me and it might be a revelation. It might be something that actually did happen. But I need you to understand that because I’m not a fundamentalist. Even if tomorrow some archaeological dig happens and they find a set of gold plates with the word “Nephi” written in Hebrew in giant letters and they translate it and it’s proof positive and we find horse bones on top of swords and we now know the Book of Mormon is true and maybe even where it took place, I still think the Book of Mormon was written by people. And so I think human bias and even prejudice was still written into the book.
Human Bias is Real
And so because of that, this idea of certain people being “white and delightful,” I still think they’re being prejudice as they are casing judgement. Even if we want to look at it from a “we’re a better than you because we’re more righteous,” they are still casing judgement. Look at Jacob, he clearly points that out, as I mentioned last time, that the Lamanites are better at marriage than the Nephites were at that time (Jacob 2:54-55 RAV, 3:5 OPV). They’re more righteous because they love their wives. They love their families, and that made them more righteous than the Nephites. So this idea of saying that someone is “white and delightful,” either as a skin color or as a righteousness, “I’m closer to God,” I think both of them are just rude. I don’t think it’s racist because they’re the same race.
Rudeness is not always Racism
And I think that when we jump on the racist bandwagon, then suddenly it’s like, oh, the racists and we’ve got to say there’s all this, you know, stuff about stopping racism. People can be rude and judgmental and not be racists. It is what it is. For example, I grew up with people calling other white people white trash. Is that racist? We were all white. I don’t know. I don’t think that it is. I think they just being rude and judgmental. I don’t think everything has to be racist or not racist. I think that we can be bad people and not be racist about it. And I think that there are times in the Book of Mormon where it’s very obvious that the Nephites are huge jerks. Samuel Lamanite shows up and tells them they’re wicked. He’s a prophet of God and they’re shooting arrows at him. Does that make them racist? It does make them wicked. I don’t care what color their skin is, they definitely were not “white and delightsome” here, and yet they were not “cursed” with “dark skin,” nor was Samuel “blessed” with white skin.”
Really Happened doesn’t Equal Taking the Words Literally
So looking at this as if it really happened, we still need to understand that when the Nephites said certain things or interpreted things a certain way, that doesn’t mean that they were right or it was good. There’s parts of the Bible that tell us to, for example, smash a baby’s head against a rock (Psalm 137:9). I love the Bible, I’m not going to smash a baby’s head against a rock. I understand that is wrong. It is morally wrong. Anyone pushing people to actually do this would be wicked. I will go as far as to say that they would be using unrighteous dominion that they were using the word of God to do horrible things to people. Clearly we are not to take this idea literally.
As a Kabbalist, I turn this around and say, “We have got to stop young wicked desires inside ourselves.” I look at the text metaphorically. But I’m going to tell you right now, if the Israelites really did smash babies’ heads in the rocks, number one, that’s atrocious and number two, if you’re going to get upset about anything in the scriptures, let’s start with not murdering people and when we’re done not doing that, then let’s focus on what might be racist. Some people love trashing the Book of Mormon and they forget that the Bible is just as bad, sometimes worse if we read them too literally. These are old books written by people that lived in a different time and saw things differently than we do. So when we look at them in a modern age, we need to figure out how they make sense for us and not take them literally even if what is said in there really did happen.
2. As a Revelation from God
Now what if it’s not an ancient text? What if it did not happen? Let’s look at the second way of looking at it, the Book of Mormon as a revelation. How do we view this if all this just a parable that from God? There have been people who have pointed out that the Salt Lake City Church is moving quite rapidly away from the Book of Mormon being a literal historical event and towards the idea that Joseph Smith received a revelation and that’s fine. Community of Christ (RLDS) seems to already be here in this position themselves. It is not a new idea. I get it. They had ideas of where id happened, can’t find enough archaeological evidence but still value it as scripture. Make it a revelation, it works. So, let’s look at it from that perspective.
Human Bias
There are a couple of things here. One is that even if it came straight from God, we’re still going to have Joseph Smith’s biases in the text. While God is infinite and perfect, Joseph Smith is not. Even if he did put a rock and a hat and he was given every word, word for word, I have a hard time believing that he didn’t make his own assumptions and his own human bias didn’t interfere with the revelation. And I can say that as someone who has received revelations myself. I can tell you that when I first started receiving revelations, there were times when I’m like, “that can’t be right, I must have received that wrong.” And so then I had to go back and correct it to what the Lord initially told me. And even then there were times when I didn’t understand what it meant. I assumed it was saying one thing that years later when rereading it, I realized it said something else because I’m a finite human being.
I make mistakes, therefore, I understand that Joseph Smith also made mistakes. This was his first big revelation, translation, whatever you want to call it. I will add that I genuinely believe that he, Joseph, believed he was translating ancient documents. And either way, “translation” or revelation his human bias tainted the text. (I used quotes there for translating because he was putting a rock in a hat, he was not literally translating as a scholar would translate things.) No matter how we look at it, there’s no way to perfectly translate something. There just isn’t. We need to understand that the Book of Mormon still isn’t perfect. And God is going to tell the story through the same things that Joseph Smith understands. And what did Joseph Smith understand? The Bible.
Joseph Knew the Bible
Joseph Smith belonged to a number of different religious groups. He joined in religious debates. He knew the Bible. And so when receiving, if we want to say this is a straight up revelation, he is still going to have his understanding of the Bible in it. And so we still need to look at this from biblical context. Because the Lord is going to give us this information, this data if you will, in something, a book, that the people of that time and going forward will read, it would be modeled after something we already know. And the Bible is what we know as Christians. And so therefore, we will want to look at things in the Book of Mormon from a Biblical perspective. That is to says that in order to properly understand the Book of Mormon, we must properly understand the Bible. Both came from the same source, and therefore we must got to that same source to understand them.
Reading with Faith
And on top of that, sprinkling a little bit of Joseph Smith’s, who was born in the early 1800’s, into that as well. When reading, we “translate” or interpret our human bias into the Bible and Book of Mormon, just as Biblical authors did when they wrote their books. Just as Joseph Smith did when writing the Book of Mormon. No matter how we look at it, we’re still at the same point. Regardless of whether it literally happened or not, even if it is just a revelation, we still have to look at it exactly the same way. And really, both of these ideas are ideas of faith. These are both grounded in the understanding that the Book of Mormon blesses the lives of those who study it to know God and build our spiritual beings.
3. Joseph Smith just made it all up
This brings us to the third one, the idea of the nonbelievers, the idea that Joseph Smith just made it all up. This one’s fairly simple. Maybe Joseph Smith put his head in the hat, maybe he didn’t, no one knows. Maybe he just sat there with Oliver Cowdery and they both knew they were faking the whole thing as Joseph read from notes or made it up off the top of his head. If Joseph Smith made it up and it’s all a lie, it’s his story. At that point, my question is, who cares?
If Joseph Smith made it up and it’s a product of the 19th century, early 19th century, then it’s nothing more than a book full of Joseph Smith’s theologies. And if you want to say that Sidney Rigdon helped him write it like some anti-Mormon folks do, he stole it from Spaulding, if you want to go all the way, then it’s just a book of theology. And what do we do with books of theology? We either study them or we ignore them.
It it Interesting to you? Is it Important to you?
So my question for you is this: If you, the reader, believe it is just a book of theology, it is something that this person made up so that he could swindle people, make a church, whatever your reasoning is doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, reading the Book of Mormon is on the same level as reading Thomas Aquinas. I’ve studied Thomas Aquinas. When I was in college, I took a course in philosophy, and it was interesting. There are some really great quotes in there, some things I liked, some things I didn’t like. But one of the things I did not do, even though there were certain things I really, really disagreed with him on, was start spouting out that he’s a racist, that his book was a racist book, because we recognize that it was a product of his time.
The things that we carry forward in the works of theologists and philosophers, the reasons we still study them and we still learn from them is because we find their ideas useful. And the parts that may work back in their time, but are not applicable now, we put those on a shelf and we just don’t use them. And people that aren’t Christians, they generally just ignore these books all together because there are other philosophers like David Hume who made some good, solid arguments on atheism they can enjoy. (I am not going to get in the debate here as to whether David Hume was an atheist pretending to be a theist or a theist that had some slightly atheist viewpoints, but that is a really fun argument.)
Take from the Text only what YOU find Useful
There are a number of things in the Book of Mormon that I absolutely love. King Benjamin’s address is my absolute favorites. Another is in the Book of Alma, where he says: “O Lord, my heart is exceeding sorrowful; wilt thou comfort my soul in Christ?” (Alma 16:110 RAV, 31:31a OPV). There’s just something about that prayer that really, it means a lot to me. There are still good things we can cherry pick from the Book of Mormon or just put on the shelf and ignore it. It doesn’t really matter.
What We Read into the Text Says More About Us
My take away from this part two (and there will be a part three) is that what we read into the text may say more about us than anything. Why do I say this? Because if we are faithful and find excuses for our own racism in the Book of Mormon then we are rejecting the word of the Lord give nto us through Jacob:
“A commandment I give unto you, which is the word of God, that ye revile no more against them because of the darkness of their skins; neither shall ye revile against them because of their filthiness; but ye shall remember your own filthiness and remember that their filthiness came because of their fathers.” -Jacob 2:60-61 RAV, 3:8-9 OPV
While I do not see the Book of Mormon as racist, any Latter Day Saint that embraces racism, judging others by their race or ethnic group, or judging anyone that belongs to a minority or is marginalized in any way doesn’t understand the Book of Mormon. And anyone looking to find fault with out religion and/or the Book of Mormon is really showing their own bias, grasping at straws. Because, either the book was given to us by God and we are reading racism into it, or it is a product of its time and any racism in it should be corrected or used to show how we have grown as a people over time.
Speaking of agendas… why do some people push the Book of Mormon as a racist narrative?
