Yesterday was beautiful. After filling the day with chores and exercise and cultural enlightenment, I had a few free moments between dusk and sleep. I wanted to at least go onto the grounds of the Temple, relax, and feel the peace that normally prevails there.
I found the usual people there—families with kids, people in their Sunday best, couples, and individuals walking on the grass or sitting by themselves meditating.
I chose a dry patch of grass, and lay down, and looked at the sky. Then I heard shouting. A lone individual was yelling something in the distance. I thought perhaps someone had gotten into an argument.
But as the shouting continued and the individual approached, the words became intelligible. It was an assault on the Church, the Temple, and Joseph Smith. The person had dropped dignity to warn supposedly-deceived Latter-day Saints to “repent of a false Gospel.”
This individual professed that the reason behind the harassment was love for his victims. While I believed there was a measure of sincerity to the motivations behind the ranting, I could not help but notice some serious flaws in its delivery.
Symptoms of Charity
What does love look like? Act like? Sound like?
“Charity seeketh not her own.” I always understood this to mean that love is unselfish, but my first mission president said this means that charity respects agency. Though the words charity and agency are not used in D&C 121, what it teaches about priesthood government could be summed up as “charity respects agency.”
The barker haranguing the saints from outside the Temple walls could not pass this test. There was no respect for me, my beliefs, or my agency.
If the barker had such great love, there would also have been patience.
Defaming the Messenger
It was obvious the main target of the verbal assault was Joseph Smith, his character and revelations. What did the assailant offer in place of the restoration? The same pablum that consoles most protestant Christians today: salvation disconnected from our behavior. Just believe in Jesus, and we'll go to heaven no matter how evil our hearts or choices.
Which is why the teachings of Jesus in the four Gospel accounts are a list of commandments and behavior-modifying instructions? No. Enormous swaths of the Bible must be discarded in order to accept this interpretation.
Perhaps this person’s stated motivation was love, but it seemed a selfish exercise instead; love takes more effort than throwing a few eggs in brief frustration, or telling others they are wrong.
Latter-day Saints have the confirmation of the Spirit when we testify of the restored Gospel; this accounts for our success in teaching and conversion. (It also helps that the Book of Mormon and the restored Gospel are true.)
How do we get people to listen, though?
The Message About Messages
In a great measure, the success of the missionary program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is attributable to its service-oriented approach. We owe this approach in part to what Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon teach us.
Joseph explained his predicament: “…being of tender years, and persecuted by those who ought to have been my friends and to have treated me kindly, and if they supposed me to be deluded to have endeavored in a proper and affectionate manner to have reclaimed me…” (Joseph Smith—History 1:28). Persecution and railing did not work with him; why would it work with anyone else?
“Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand, and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind…
“…the devil flatters us that we are very righteous, when we are feeding on the faults of others” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 240-41). Volcanic contempt for Joseph Smith, and contempt in general, have been the earmarks of the most vociferous critics of the Church from the beginning.
Jesus identified love as one of the main traits of His disciples (see John 13:34-35). Where love isn’t, His disciples aren’t, either.
“Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Joseph Smith is a fruitful bough, indeed. Do we need any more evidence that he was a prophet? Was he a messenger of God, as I believe? Again, “ye shall know them by their fruits.” Grapes and figs do not come from weeds and thistles.
Another irony: we teach faith in Jesus Christ as the first principle of the restored Gospel. According to the individual shouting at me last night, all we need is faith in Christ to be saved and go to heaven, regardless of our poor behavior.
Does that grace not efface any false beliefs also, if we have them? We have already cleared their bar, so to speak. One retired anti-Mormon admitted as much to me when I was a missionary. Why try to correct or convert those who, in his opinion, already qualified as “saved?”
To me this is more evidence that contempt, not love, motivated that critic.
Yes, there are some sane and good individuals who disbelieve in Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling, but they tend not to shed the appearance of goodness and sanity when they share their disbelief.
This contrasts with most LDS apostates. “...a few leave the Church who cannot then leave the Church alone” (Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, Nov. 1980, p. 14).
Getting Evangelism Right
The Book of Mormon serves both as a missionary tract we use to bring people into the Church, and as an instruction manual to help us learn how to do missionary work. Ammon is exemplary:
“…I will be thy servant…
“…I will show forth my power…which is in me…that I may win the hearts of these my fellow-servants, that I may lead them to believe on my words” (Alma 17:25, 29). This service mentality colors all good Latter-day Saint attempts to teach the Gospel.
I remember, as a missionary, seeing a woman unloading a huge number of heavy grocery bags from the back of her car. My companion and I offered to help. She accepted our offer. We unloaded the bags, asked if there were anything else we could do, she said no, and we left.
This was far more effective than standing on the street and yelling at her; even without any attempt on our part to proselytize (it felt wrong in that moment) a seed might have been planted that could grow later, whereas a forceful approach could have hardened this good woman’s heart.
Again, instructions to all missionaries, from the Book of Mormon: “Use boldness, but not overbearance; and also see that ye bridle your passions, that ye may be filled with love…” (Alma 38:12).
Responding
As I lay on my back listening to the shouting, wondering what to do, I felt one clear impression: Leave.
I looked for a person who had been relaxing on the other side of the lawn; she had already left. I paused for a time, wondering if I should get up and testify or reprove. No. The prompting kept coming: Leave.
I got up without a backward glance, and strolled off the lawn. But driving away felt awkward.
I worried that I might come under some kind of condemnation for not standing up and testifying, or at least attempting to listen and calm the disruptive behavior. I felt a prompting to drive back to the Temple grounds. Circling the block in my car, I looked for the barker. I found two police cars in the parking lot outside the walls; they appeared to be talking to someone. I assumed it was the antagonist.
Apparently, freedom of religion, speech, and peaceable assembly in the United States does not extend to disruptive assembly and public harassment. Police already enforce these laws—without my help.
I am glad I followed that prompting and left.
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you…” (Matt. 5:44). Arguing with this person would have been as fruitless as his misguided attempts to “save” me from the evils he attributed to Mormonism.
As anyone loses the Spirit, the love of God, charity, departs from that person’s heart. The desire to argue and compel increases, while the ability to accept others’ free will, agency, declines. We begin to resemble Satan (devil means accuser, slanderer), and subscribe to his plan of compulsory righteousness.
This applies to Latter-day Saints and their detractors. Being right does not give us license to criticize or condemn or accuse or harass. Unless we feel prompted by the Spirit to offer correction, we are risking departure from the boundaries the Lord gives us:
“Reproving betimes (immediately) with sharpness when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;
“That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death.
“Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God…” (D&C 121:43-45).
Silence
Jesus held His peace before a sign-seeking magistrate; we can do the same (unless specifically prompted otherwise) when belligerent critics demand proof that Joseph Smith was and is a true prophet.
When we fight against Lucifer with his own tools, we have already lost. Mercy is a bizarre weapon, but unless we have it in our personal arsenal, unless we can forgive and let go, we are liable to get sucked into the same vortex of contempt and self-righteousness that swallows up the people who criticize the Church, its current leaders, and Joseph Smith.
“Now there was a strict law among the people of the church, that there should not any man…arise and persecute those that did not belong to the church…
“Nevertheless, there were many among them that began to be proud, and began to contend warmly with their adversaries, even unto blows; yea, they would smite one another with their fists.
“Now this…was a cause of much affliction to the church; yea, it was the cause of much trial with the church.
“For the hearts of many were hardened, and their names were blotted out, that they were remembered no more among the people of God” (Alma 1:21-24).
Bickering and quarreling and fighting with the enemies of the Church can lead to expulsion from the Church.
Those who attempt to force their faith on others have very weak faith. Challenges to weak faith tend to elicit a violent reaction; the weaker the faith, the more violent the reaction.
Peace, calmness, confidence, and patience with self and others and everyone’s flaws, are evidence of strong and vibrant faith in Christ and the Gospel. (Boldness, too, but not to the point of overbearance.)
Anti-Doubt
I feel bad for the person who felt so distressed and angered that last night’s display—marching outside a Temple and shouting about the questions that destroyed the person’s testimony—seemed like a reasonable course of action. If that person had posed those questions to the Lord in humble, sincere prayer, answers would have been available.
Restating accusations as questions, asked humbly in prayer, is the preventative solution to a lot of apostasy. Sincere questions in prayer yield one of two possible outcomes: 1. Peace and assurance that things are alright; 2. Answers to questions (after we are ready for them). No one can force revelation, though. Humility and patience are essential.
A personal witness is like a pyramid, stacked with a broad foundation of simple Gospel principles, crowned later on with the mysteries of the kingdom. It is unsafe to share information that belongs near the top of the pyramid before we have a large, stable foundation.
It is possible to have questions about things that we are years away from being ready to receive. Faith, patience, humility, and trust in the good feelings of the Spirit are necessary in the meantime.
But the answers do come, if we do not abandon our trust in the promptings of the Spirit that led us this far. God gives answers line upon line (like the blocks stacked up in a pyramid) because the bottom lines have to be wide enough to support the grand concepts later on.
Public teaching in the Church mainly consists of building foundations, of sharing milk instead of meat lest babes choke and suffocate (like the shouter I encountered last night; he was complaining about what he could not understand, venting his frustration).
The price for answers to questions about sacred things includes open ears, prolonged obedience and personal virtue, and a demonstration of the ability to keep silent about sacred things when answers come.
I have learned through the whisperings of the Holy Spirit that, yes, Joseph Smith was and is a true prophet. If I can receive personal revelation to answer my hard questions, anyone can.
