"...well they were acting as men."

In 1983 I worked on the Pioneer Theatre Company's production of Amadeus. One of my favorite parts of this show was when Salieri realizes that his life dedicated to religion and the celebration of god through his music did not earn him the position of god's favorite composer.  Instead that honor went to Mozart.

"I was suddenly frightened.  It seemed to me that I heard the voice of God–and that it issued from a creature whose own voice I had also heard–and it was the voice of an obscene child."~ Peter Schaefer's Amadeus.

But Mozart was not really god's instrument he was a man like any other with a gift or a natural born and cultivated talent.  To Salieri the fact that his flawed man was so talented was a slap in the face and cause for a declaration for war against god and a quest to silence his instrument.

I was reminded of this story as I read the Salt Lake Tribunes article on Ezra Taft Benson.  The article pointed out how one of the LDS church's more colorful figures was deeply flawed.  For those of us who are now on the outside this was no surprise.  His follies have been documented his grandson and it is well known that he is the one character in Utah that is responsible for our single party system of government.

Benson was not the first colorfully flawed religious leader where there was a belief that his position/authority/talents were god given.  In LDS lore there are the characters of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.  Smith was a know treasure hunter, philanderer/polyandrous man who criminally destroyed a printing press and started a couple of rebellions and then died in a shoot out while attempting to escape from jail.  Young was a racist polygamist with a thirst for blood atonement who is credited with the orders/environment  that resulted in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.  

It is not just LDS leaders who are flawed and leave as their legacy scandals.  The Catholic Church has a rich history of scandals which include the Spanish Inquisition, incest, and organized crime.  The Evangelicals have Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Tilton, and Kent Hovind.  The list includes extra marital affairs, tax evasion, homosexual relationships and fraud.

If you ask the faithful they will excuse the behavior of these supposed men of god.  The will say when they are doing good in the world it was inspired of god.  What about their less inspiring moments?  Well... they were not acting as prophets or men of god.  They were acting as men.

Which is exactly my point.  In each case these supposed men of god rose to power by making claims they could not prove.  They maintained power through manipulation and either lost power through scandal or their fraud became apparent after their death.  It takes incredible mental gymnastics to engage in the cognitive dissonance that is required to follow these leaders or to believe their works are inspired once you know how flawed they are in character.  Yet the faithful write checks, invest time and energy and bet their salvation on the word of men.  Even if that man is "the voice of an obscene child."

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

From the Mormon Times Monday January 25, 2010:

"Readers have no way of knowing which critical claims have already been discredited, and the anti-Mormon sponsors are certainly not going to tell them right there on the site," he said.

The democratization of ideas sometimes confuses the reader as to what is true and what is not, as all ideas are presented horizontally and as fact, thus positioning the blogger's flippant opinion alongside the scholar's well-researched dissertation.

Elder Hafen said there is much discussion out there regarding the methods through which Joseph Smith translated ancient scripture such as the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price and the Bible. That's all fine and good so long as the questioner is mainly focused on the works themselves, the great mountains of eternal knowledge they contain, and what that knowledge means in the lives of God's children rather than on the specifics of the revelatory process.

"How (Joseph Smith) received it doesn't ultimately matter to us very much," he said.

Elder Hafen said the "mountain" that is of most importance is the fact that all people are children of a loving, concerned father in heaven.

So long as a person has that tenant down pat, they'll be able to explore more challenging ideas, and even deal with unanswered questions.

The above excerpt of a summary of a fireside speech given by Bruce C. Hafen struck me as funny...not as in a ha ha but a strange sort of way. I, as a flippant blogger, struggle with the amount of cognitive dissonance that is required here to suspend disbelief. While Elder Hafen encourages study; he discourages examining the facts on their own. Instead he suggests the examiner defer to the writings of the scholars who I assume would mean FAIR or FARMS. I have read the summarizing and distortion of history on the scholar’s sites and am left questioning “what the definition of is…is”

The reality here is that Elder Hafen, as a General Authority, should be in a position to speak with authority regarding the doctrinal issues surrounding the translation of the “sacred texts” and what the methods therein mean to the veracity of those texts. Instead, according to the summary of his speech, he obfuscates. He does not address for the member and especially for the member who is in question what the truth is. Members and seekers alike who research this material by using the apologist sites offered by the “scholars” are in many cases left with a WTF response to the convoluted distortions.

The facts are:

• Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, not by reading the plates or and translating them character by character but by burying his head in his hat with two seer stones (urmin and thummin) inside the hat.

• He didn’t have to “write the story” he “told the story” to his scribes. In many cases the “plates” were not in the room. Of all the scribes only three died as members of the church. The rest either left or were excommunicated.

• The seer stones were the same stones he used to hunt treasure with.
This photo is the one the LDS church uses to illustrate the process. Indeed this is a misrepresentation of historical facts and accounts surrounding the actual events.



Elder Hafen suggests the reader should be interested in the works and their content not the way the content came to be. This double bind is common in cognitive dissonance. If you don't get it it's your fault....try harder! It has also been postulated that the character of the man is not as important as the restoration of the gospel. However, a "flippant blogger" is discredited based upon character...why shouldn't a supposed prophet? My offense is sarcasm and skepticism. The man in question here was convicted of treasure hunting, married 30+ women (many of whom were already married), took child brides, engaged in willful destruction of a printing press, and consumed alcohol all after having been selected by god to restore the gospel.

I am of the opinion that character matters and the method at which our works are delivered are of significant importance. To attempt to separate the two creates a psychosis and an unresolvable double bind.