Download Print-Friendly Version

Imagine you are a first-century Jew at the time of Jesus. You saw the famed Rabbi of Galilee perform miracles. He multiplied food and raised the dead, miracles echoing Elijah and Elisha. You heard him teach doctrines that built upon the law of Moses, but he drew out principles that made the law much more challenging. You saw him ride into Jerusalem on a colt, cleanse the temple, and teach that he was not only the Messiah, but Deity himself. 

And then he was betrayed by his friend and follower, Judas (known in Hebrew as Judah), the namesake of his own people. And rather than take his place on the political throne of Israel, you witnessed this Son of David condemned by Jew and Gentile alike, then tormented, crucified, and placed in a tomb. 

What would you expect next if your only source of reference was the Hebrew Bible? Would you have recognized Jesus of Nazareth in the scriptures you studied? Could you have anticipated from scripture that this self-proclaimed Messiah would miraculously come back to life—forever?

As Easter approaches, perhaps we can feel more charity and empathy for the disciples’ confusion following Christ’s death. Their source of scripture was the Hebrew Bible, which we call the Old Testament. While the Nephites and potentially some ancient Israelites had explicit teachings about the Atonement and Resurrection, the Jews in Jesus’ day faced an open question. 

Despite being longer than the rest of the Latter-day Saint canon combined, the Old Testament has fewer explicit references to “the fundamental principles of our religion”.

Yet while the Old Testament speaks less explicitly of Christ, shadows of His Atonement and Resurrection can be found in its pages. Some teachings of Christ may have been intentionally veiled in rituals and prophetic language. But just as the temple veil was rent at Jesus’s death, making clear that the way back to God was through Christ, the Spirit can lift the veil from our understanding, helping us see that the Easter message is implicit in the Old Testament’s pages. 

Why Isn’t the Resurrection Clearly Taught in the Old Testament?

Restoration scripture makes clear what the Old Testament does not: ancient prophets like Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Isaiah, and others knew of Christ’s mission to some degree. This makes the relative absence of discussion about Christ’s suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection in the Old Testament puzzling. As I see it, scripture (particularly the Book of Mormon) provides three potential explanations. 

The first is that revelation occurs gradually: “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little.” It may be that knowledge of Christ’s atonement, death, and resurrection was originally sparse, leading to less emphasis in earlier scripture. But our teachings about ancient prophets, if taken literally, are too clear about prophets’ knowledge of Christ’s atonement and resurrection for these doctrines to be considered only seedlings. This must be supplemented by other explanations.

The second possibility is that teachings of a suffering “Anointed One” were rejected, lost, or censored by those who compiled the texts. For example, the Book of Mormon cites Israelite prophets like Zenos, Zenock, and Neum—who aren’t in our canon elsewhere—that taught of Christ’s suffering, crucifixion, and burial. These prophets were stoned and cast out, and perhaps their teachings were likewise discarded.

Nephi also states that the Bible was altered before its international distribution: “they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious.” The editing and authorship history of the Old Testament is complex, and some books could have been crafted by an editor who did not know of or believe in Christ, despite prophets having taught of Him. 

A third possibility is that Old Testament teachings of Christ were veiled to the people by God’s prophets, or even veiled to prophets by God Himself, because of ancient Israel’s spiritual unpreparedness, or for some other divine purpose. Paul spoke of a “veil” that obscures understanding “in the reading of the old testament,” but that this “veil is done away in Christ.” The veiled message Paul speaks of likely came by giving Israel rituals that would resemble Christ’s sacrifice, as well as giving them sacred texts that veiled the mission of Christ or that could point to Him as a secondary, or higher, meaning. The true nature of Christ’s mission could only be gleaned by revelation.

Taken together, these explanations allow us to admit that explicit Old Testament references to Christ are sparse, but that Christ’s mission can still be found through the Spirit’s tutelage. Jesus taught that “the scriptures” of his day—meaning the Old Testament—“are they which testify of me” and commanded his audience to “search” them. With that imperative, I turn now to veiled Easter teachings of Christ found in the Old Testament for those with “eyes to see, and ears to hear.”

Ancient Israelite Prophecy of Christ’s Sacrifice

Abinadi, teaching about the Messiah’s divinity, condescension, atonement, and resurrection, claimed that “all the prophets who have prophesied ever since the world began [have] spoken more or less concerning these things.” Perhaps some of this teaching was censored, but much of it may have been inspired thematic and narrative parallels in scripture that constituted “more or less” a prophecy. As Nephi said, “all things which have been given of God from the beginning of the world, unto man, are the typifying of him,” including parallels in sacred history, poetry, and even prophecies with other primary meanings. Jacob added a second witness that the Israelite scriptures “truly testify of Christ” and “that none of the prophets have written, nor prophesied, save they have spoken concerning this Christ.”

Christ’s atoning sacrifice in Gethsemane and on the cross at Calvary is mirrored in some Old Testament narratives. In the Akedah, God commands Abraham to bind and then offer a burnt sacrifice of “thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest.” This excruciating story, rife with philosophical complexity, does not thoroughly explain itself, but Jacob saw it as typifying Heavenly Father’s offering of His Only Begotten Son for our sins. In further parallels to Christ, Isaac rode a donkey to Mount Moriah, just as Christ rode a donkey for his triumphal entry to Jerusalem, and Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice to its site, just as Christ carried a wooden cross to Golgotha. When Isaac asked his father where the offering was, Abraham replied, “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” Isaac was miraculously delivered, and a ram in the thicket was provided as a substitute, symbolizing how the Lamb of God would ultimately sacrifice in our place. 

In another example reminiscent of the crucifixion and resurrection, Moses is commanded to raise up a brass “serpent and set it upon a pole” for the Israelites to look upon for healing from fatal snake bites. As with the story of the Akedah, the Christian significance of the story is never explained in the Old Testament, but Christ Himself and Book of Mormon prophets interpret it as a veiled symbol of Jesus raised upon a cross to save us by having the faith to look to Him. 

Beyond narrative mirroring, Christ’s mission seems to be directly or indirectly described in isolated phrases and references. New Testament authors like Matthew felt comfortable declaring that Old Testament passages were “fulfilled” when they provided an inspired parallel, even if the context of the passage doesn’t indicate at all that it is messianic prophecy. I argue that we can generally feel comfortable accepting these parallels as well if we acknowledge that there might be a different primary meaning. 

Language echoing Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion is also scattered across the Psalms and connects Christ to his royal ancestor David. The Psalmist(s) describes betrayal by a “familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread”; being despised, mocked, and taunted about how “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him”; being surrounded by “the wicked,” after which “they pierced my hands and my feet”; being given “vinegar to drink”; crying “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”; having his clothing divided among a crowd; and being “poured out like water.” The context of some of these psalms suggests that the entire psalms were not necessarily messianic prophecy, yet Gospel authors understood them as being strongly implicated, and Psalm 22 in particular bears stunningly similar parallels.

Finally, there were prophets whose writings could be fairly classified as more direct prophecies of Christ’s sacrifice, most notably Isaiah. In particular, two of Isaiah’s four “Servant Songs” testify strongly of Christ, even if they applied to multiple people (the unnamed servant has variously been understood to be Jesus, Israel, Isaiah, Cyrus, and others). One of the Songs speaks of an unnamed servant who listened to God without rebelling, who gave his “back to the smiters,” and who did not hide his face “from shame and spitting.”

Isaiah’s fourth Servant Song, even though contested in interpretation, is by far the most reminiscent passage in the Old Testament of Christ’s atonement. It describes a lowly “servant” of God with “marred” appearance who has “no form nor comeliness [and] no beauty that we should desire him,” and who is “despised and rejected of man; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Although many prophets have been unpopular, the affliction this servant bears is for our griefs, our sorrows, our transgressions, and “the iniquity of us all.” The servant is given as an atoning “offering for sin” by which he will “justify many” and make “intercession for the transgressors.” In so doing he was “cut off out of the land of the living,” “made his grave with the wicked,” and “poured out his soul unto death.” And despite his death, he will be “exalted and extolled, and be very high,” will “prolong his days,” will “see his seed,” and will be divided “a portion with the great [and] spoil with the strong.” Even if there were other applications of this prophecy, it testifies beautifully of Christ’s mission and is perhaps the rarest gem of prophecy of Christ in the Old Testament.

Sacrifice 

In addition to prophecies,  the Old Testament practice of sacrifice foreshadows Christ’s sacrifice for us all. 

The Old Testament speaks openly of a victorious, reigning Messiah, but says little of a Messiah who suffers for sins. But that changes if we learn to see ancient animal sacrifice as a shadow of “that great and last sacrifice” that would satisfy the demands of justice for our sins. 

Though animal sacrifice is as old as Adam, the books of Moses codified its intricacies. With five distinct offerings—burnt offerings, peace (well-being) offerings, sin offerings, trespass offerings, and meat (grain) offerings—the Mosaic rules for sacrifice were complex. The sacrifices had mixed and overlapping purposes: atonement or expiation of sin, removal of ritual impurity, gratitude, memorial, obedience, or petition for deliverance. Animals of both genders and even non-animals were used for many offerings, but all offerings were food items, often with symbolically pleasing smells. Sometimes the offeror ate the sacrifice, other times the priests ate it, and burnt offerings were simply burnt for God.

Some special sacrifices were associated with holy days, such as the Day of Atonement or Passover, and some were performed on behalf of all of God’s people. The Passover sacrifice, in particular, involved the slaughter of a male lamb, whose blood saved the firstborn sons of Israel. And whatever other sacrifices were given, all firstborn animals were to be given to the Lord. 

We can see how these many purposes of sacrifice map onto Christ’s atonement and our own personal sacrifices. We see similarities to Christ describing himself as food and drink that must be ritually consumed by others. We especially connect the image of a male lamb of Passover to the Christian message because scripture calls Jesus the Lamb of God. In general, though, the Christian meaning of these sacrifices was hidden at the time. It is not clear from Leviticus that the Israelites were anticipating a final sacrifice. Leviticus merely taught the underlying principle that blood represents the sacredness of life, and “it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” 

As we take the sacrament this Easter season, we symbolically consume Christ’s body—just as Israelites did with animal sacrifice—and are divinely fed. We also promise to give up our sins. As the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, “Real, personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. Instead, it is a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar and letting it be consumed.” We can also follow Christ’s example and the other purposes of sacrifice in sacrificing our own time and wills, obeying God, expressing gratitude, asking God for what we need, and being “an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God.” 

The Law of Moses

In addition to its sacrifice requirements, the Law of Moses foreshadowed Christ, who later declared not only that he fulfilled the law but that “I am the law.” As the Book of Hebrews teaches, “the law [of Moses] ha[s] a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things.” The law seemed to require revelation to see Christ shadowed in it. Abinadi and Benjamin both taught that the Israelites “did not all understand the law,” not because of low intellect, but because they “hardened their hearts.” This was certainly true of Sherem, who claimed Jacob was wrongly “converting” the law of Moses into worship of Christ. 

Nephite prophets saw Mosaic Law as creating a typological framework for an ultimate self-sacrifice to atone for all sins. Nephi taught that “for this end hath the law of Moses been given”: “proving unto my people the truth of the coming of Christ.” Abinadi taught that it was “a shadow of those things which are to come.” Amulek testified that “the whole meaning of the law, every whit” was to point to “that great and last sacrifice” of “the Son of God, yea, infinite and eternal.” We, too, can acknowledge the complexity of the Law of Moses while affirming that it served as a type and shadow of Christ’s atonement to ancient Israelites.

The Old Testament and Resurrection

As for its teachings about the resurrection specifically, the Old Testament shows a plurality of views about the afterlife. Resurrection isn’t clearly taught in many of its books, especially the earlier ones. Jews in the days of Jesus were divided on whether it occurred. Pharisees, who accepted the later prophetic texts, believed in resurrection; Sadducees, who held only to the older books of Moses, did not. Zoramites like Zeezrom and Antionah, who demonstrate knowledge of the early Hebrew Bible books, are also puzzled by references to the resurrection. 

The Book of Daniel declares that “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” But that book falls relatively late in the Old Testament, and the clarity of the doctrine is obscured as we move back in time—perhaps another veiled or censored teaching. Though there is some uncertainty about what he meant, Isaiah prophesied that our God “will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces;” and “O Lord. . . Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body [or “together their bodies”] shall they arise.”

Other than these passages, there are a few resurrection passages that are debated but possibly veiled or which might have a secondary meaning. Ezekiel prophesied that a valley of dry bones will come to life as normal people, primarily as a metaphor for the restoration of Israel, but perhaps also suggesting the possibility of resurrection. The Hebrew grammar is jumbled, but Job seems to say, with words not in Hebrew italicized, “though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet [from] my flesh shall I see God.” 

With these powerful images of resurrection available to him, Jesus, surprisingly, does not cite Daniel, Ezekiel, or Job when prophesying of his own resurrection. Instead, Jesus sees the most relevance in the story of Jonah (or Jonas in Greek): “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”  We don’t instinctively think of Jonah being swallowed by a “great fish” as death, but Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish uses the language of death: “out of the belly of hell [Sheol] cried I, and thou heardest my voice.” He stayed there for three days before his deliverance.

Perhaps more importantly, God is the one who breathes life into humanity, and he saves Israel from death and bondage repeatedly. The Exodus is just one beautiful example of God delivering his people from bondage—a frequent metaphor for death in scripture. And God shows himself in the Old Testament to be a God of miracles. The same omnipotence that would allow God to part the Red Sea, stop the sun in the sky, shake the earth, obliterate cities, turn back armies, bring springs to life, and deliver his people is the same power required to perform the most stunning of all miracles: to raise from the dead.  

Christ is the Meaning

Finding Christ in the Old Testament happens the same way we develop a testimony of Christ in the first place. Nephi tells us that a key to understanding Isaiah, for example, is the “spirit of prophecy”—that is, the “testimony of Jesus” obtained by revelation. If we encounter Christ’s character in the course of our study, we have found him in the text. Peter, who recognized Christ as the promised Messiah, told Jesus, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” not because it was a logical imperative in scripture, but because our “Father which is in heaven” had “revealed it unto [him].” The Lord’s counsel for studying the Apocrypha also applies to the Old Testament: “whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom; And whoso receiveth not by the Spirit, cannot be benefited.” 

Christ is indeed “in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things.” Like the first-century Jews who needed the Spirit to understand Christ in their scripture, we, too, can seek the Spirit’s help in unveiling Christ in every part of our lives, however hidden He may seem. As we search the scriptures and apply “our hearts to understanding,” we can come to see what Jesus taught His apostles: that the Old Testament scriptures “are they which testify of me.”

As Christ “yielded up the ghost” on Calvary, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom,” a symbol of overcoming the barriers to God’s presence under the old covenant. As the Book of Hebrews teaches, we can now “enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus . . . through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.” Just as the veil in the temple symbolized Christ’s broken body, the veil of the Old Testament is also rent by Christ Himself through revelation. 

Perhaps we can now better understand, with the scarcity of explicit references to Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, how confused Christ’s disciples must have been immediately after his death. For those on the road to Emmaus, this confusion was dispelled when Jesus, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets . . . expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself,” and why he “ought . . . to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory.” He was the veiled meaning all along.

The post Unveiling Christ this Easter appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

There’s a kind of disappointment that doesn’t arrive as tragedy. It arrives as delay: the diagnosis that lingers, the job search that won’t resolve, the prayer that feels like it hits a ceiling. You keep doing the next right thing—and nothing budges.

“Are you having a 3½ Moment?” It sounds baffling—until you are in one.

A 3½ Moment is my name for a familiar stretch of discipleship when life feels stalled: you’re doing what you know is right, but the relief doesn’t come. The problem lingers, and hope starts to feel naïve. 

In scripture, God often teaches through symbols. As Elder Orson F. Whitney, an early apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, observed, “God teaches with symbols; it is his favorite method of teaching.” 

One of the Bible’s most familiar symbols is 7—wholeness and completion. But a lesser-known number appears in stories of drought, scattering, and delayed rescue: 3½, half of seven. It often functions as a literary signal that deliverance is delayed—but the delay has a limit. Here’s what that pattern can teach us about our hardest chapters, and four ways to keep faith until God brings your “7.”

Seven: Scripture’s Symbol of Completion

The Bible trains us to notice the symbol 7. God created the heavens and earth in six days, and “he rested on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2). The number 7 appears throughout the Bible as one of the most common symbols in scripture.

In scripture, the number 7 often refers to wholeness, completion, and perfection. The symbol 7 teaches us to trust that God’s promises will be fulfilled. It also reminds us to obey to completion. Naaman’s story makes the point almost painfully: the sixth dip looks indistinguishable from the seventh. Partial obedience can look reasonable—until the miracle arrives one step later. Joshua’s armies would have suffered complete defeat had they circled Jericho for six days before battle. Seven often appears as a symbol for completing a work.

Three and a Half: When Deliverance is Delayed

In Daniel and Revelation, we see these 3½ measures show up in apocalyptic settings—visions of oppression, exile, and persecution. They mark a period that is real and painful, but also limited: evil is permitted a season, then God intervenes. That 3½ symbol can also have personal meaning to us as a metaphor for our discipleship—what it feels like to live inside a promised ending that hasn’t arrived yet.

Note that recognizing the symbolic meaning of numbers in scriptures is safe spiritual territory, as opposed to the speculative and tangential work of occult numerology. One caution: apocalyptic numbers are rarely a stopwatch for predicting outcomes, and they aren’t a guarantee that God will resolve a specific hardship on our preferred schedule. Their gift is different: they insist that evil and suffering are not ultimate, and that God sets limits we cannot always see from inside the storm. 

The symbol 3½ is often expressed in different but equivalent forms: 3½ years; 42 months; 1,260 days; “a time, times, and half a time”; or three and a half days. Revelation uses these equivalent measures to describe a bounded period of tribulation for God’s people—long enough to be terrifying, short enough to be survivable because God remains sovereign.

The number 3½ is half of 7. That gives us a clue as to its meaning. Read alongside seven (completion), 3½ can be heard as the ‘incomplete’ half, an unfinished story. The texts are speaking first about communal suffering and divine deliverance; I’m using their repeated timeframe as a devotional lens for individual seasons that feel unfinished.

On a personal level, 3½ reminds us that we live in a fallen world, with seasons of opposition and adversity, which will resolve because of 7. For some, that glorious conclusion may arrive beyond mortality; the certainty of “7” rests in Christ’s Resurrection even when present circumstances do not change. But that promise assures that for even the most stubborn problems of mortality, an amazing conclusion is promised.

When Life Feels Stuck at 3½

Symbolically, 3½ can represent our own hard times and challenges, but it carries the understanding that all things can be perfected and brought to a resolution by Jesus Christ. The symbol 3½ teaches us to have divine hope in the eventual 7, to complete our work of keeping God’s commandments (D&C 11:20) and to joyfully look forward to God completing His work (Moses 1:39).

In hard times, it may feel as though the gospel plan isn’t working for us because we don’t appear to be succeeding in ways that we expect. These are moments when cynicism feels most plausible, and most costly. Many hard times can feel like a 3½ Moment, but a 3½ Moment is not the end of the story. It is only half of seven, a limited period of adversity before divine deliverance. Because 3½ is connected to 7, we have the assurance that our suffering and problems are temporary, as we look to Jesus Christ.

President Russell M. Nelson, the late president of The Church of Jesus Christ, once described the discipline this way: “Our focus must be riveted on the Savior and His gospel. It is mentally rigorous to strive to look unto Him in every thought. But, when we do, our doubts and fears flee.” 

To have its intended meaning, the symbol of 3½ must be connected to the symbol of 7. Similarly, to fulfill its intended purposes, we benefit when we connect our hard times to Jesus Christ.

In my own prayers, I’ve learned to ask for something simpler than an explanation: a sentence I can live on. “I can’t see the end yet. Help me be faithful in the middle. Help me take the next step.”

Wendell’s 3½ Moment

Wendell Jones and I previously served together in a bishopric, a congregation’s leadership. In 2022, Wendell was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The disease has taken things from him in stages, but it hasn’t taken his posture toward life.

As he navigates this period, Wendell has a deep knowledge and testimony of the gospel plan that helps him maintain an eternal perspective about his life and his illness.

After his diagnosis, he logged miles on a two-wheeled bike to keep his strength. When that became unsafe, he switched to three wheels. Now he rides in a car—often in the passenger seat—so he can talk while someone else drives. It’s a small parable of discipleship: when one way of moving forward closes, you learn another.

My wife recently asked Wendell, “You are always so happy; how do you do it?” Wendell’s response was direct: “How could I not, when I think of everything that Jesus has done for me?”

Wendell has spent his adult life serving his parents and his large posterity. Now, in this season of life, he humbly allows them to serve him.

What Suffering Makes of Us

Alma 62:41 demonstrates the principle that the same difficulties will result in different outcomes. The Nephites had just finished a decade of war, witnessing and experiencing horrific atrocities. The Book of Mormon records that “because of the exceedingly great length of the war… many had become hardened… [and] many were softened because of their afflictions.” The same set of experiences led to opposite spiritual outcomes. What matters most in life is not the adversity faced, but the response.

There is nothing neutral with adversity. Adversity changes us, for better or worse.

Yet when hard times come, we may think:

• “What have I done to deserve this?”
• “Why is this happening to me, when I’m trying so hard to be good?”
• “Why is this problem lingering so long?”

The book of Alma teaches that “whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day” (Alma 36:3).

Expect Friction

How can difficult problems be a catalyst to make us better, not bitter? How can adversity become a 3½ Moment that is a stepping stone toward our 7, which is eternal life? I observed four practices in the example of Wendell, and in my own life. 

Author Dennis Wholey wrote, as shared by President Jeffrey R. Holland, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: “Expecting a trouble-free life because you are a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.”

Even Jesus was made “perfect through sufferings” (Hebrews 2:10). Trials are not evidence that the plan is failing; often they are evidence that God’s plan for us is working.

Practice Gratitude Without Denial

I share a principle that has been meaningful to me. I’ve come to think of it as a kind of “eternal unfairness” principle. Each of us will be resurrected and can receive an immortal body, a gift made possible by the Atonement of Christ. We didn’t earn that. 

Jesus Christ bled “from every pore” (Mosiah 3:7; D&C 19:18) and suffered infinitely, so we have the gift of repentance and receive a remission of our sins. We didn’t earn that.

In Latter-day Saint belief, Jesus Christ, through the ordinances provided in temples, blesses us with eternal life and eternal families—an incomprehensible gift made possible as we receive the Atonement of Christ by making and keeping covenants. We didn’t earn that.

In things that matter most, remember: The deck is stacked—not against us, but in our favor! Life is truly “unfair” because of Jesus Christ. Aren’t we so grateful for it?

Let Trust Be Active

Elder Richard G. Scott, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, taught, “This life is an experience in profound trust—trust in Jesus Christ, trust in His teachings… To trust means to obey willingly without knowing the end from the beginning.” Trials can help us increase our trust in God: that He “shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain” (2 Nephi 2:2), and that “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world” (2 Nephi 26:24).

Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?” we can ask, “Why is this happening for me?” What am I to learn? How can this problem help me increase my faith and trust in Jesus Christ? Nelson taught that we can “receive more faith by doing something that requires more faith.”

Turn Outward

Jesus taught by example that in times of adversity we should look outward and serve others. While on the cross, in His deepest agony and suffering, we see Jesus—astonishingly—arranging for the care of His mother:

“When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son. Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother” (John 19:26–27).

In times of adversity, our natural inclination is to focus inward. Instead, Jesus invites us to look outward to others, especially when we are experiencing personal challenges. This is a gospel paradox: “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 10:39). Elder David A. Bednar, also an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ, taught, “Character is demonstrated by looking and reaching outward when the natural and instinctive response is to be self-absorbed and turn inward.”

When those inevitable hard times come, we have a choice: we can be frustrated, grit our teeth, and suffer through it. Or we can see this problem that we would never choose as an opportunity. Your 3½ Moment does not define you, but it can refine you. Healing will come. All problems can be temporary on an eternal scale, as we strive to follow Jesus Christ. When you are in that 3½ Moment, remember: 7 is coming.

The post Your Hardest Season Might Be Exactly Half a Miracle appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

This article is part of a four‑part series that draws from insights in our forthcoming book, Exemplary, Strong Black Marriages & Families (Routledge, in press).

My journey as a researcher of strong African American families of faith begins with a short story about my paternal grandmother. As a highly religious, praise-dancing, Bible-quoting woman of faith, my grandmother based her every thought and decision on a religious foundation. After being diagnosed with colon cancer, she faithfully tucked her prescriptions into her Bible in lieu of having the prescriptions filled. If she was here today, my grandmother would argue that she won that battle against cancer. She would emphasize that she was faithful to the end, and she trusted that God would have healed her, if it was His will for her to be healed on this Earth. However, for a 16-year-old kid who just wanted his grandmother, her death left me with more questions than answers. Unbeknownst to me at the time, her death would plant in me a seed to understand religion and its role in Black families.

One day, while sitting in Loren’s office during our weekly Monday meetings, and while expressing my frustration with my dissertation proposal, he revealed that he had something for me. Handing me a massive 4-inch binder with over 1,000 pages of narrative interview data, Loren asked me if I would like to read the interviews of the married, strong Black couples that he had researched for over a decade. I read all 1,000 pages of interviews over a single weekend. I was fascinated! The stories of these marriages were so rich, so detailed, and so sacred. I was amazed that it could even be considered “research.” The role of religion in building a strong marriage was central to each interview, and this further ignited my desire to understand religion in Black families. The Monday after I had been handed a binder too big to fit in my bookbag, I asked Loren if I could utilize the interviews on strong Black families to examine how religious coping had contributed to their strong marriages. He enthusiastically agreed. We have now been research partners for 13 years.

Despite my desire to study strong Black marriages, I was not necessarily surrounded by these types of relationships growing up. Neither of my grandmothers were in long-term marriages. In addition, my parents divorced around the time I graduated from high school. My parents had separated long before their divorce, so most of my memories of “family” came from looking at old pictures and seeing us all smiling together. Growing up, the best example I had of a strong marriage was a set of my great-grandparents, who were married for about 60 years before the death of my great grandfather, Paw-Paw. Paw-Paw was a minister in Southern Louisiana. He was deeply grounded in his faith, and he raised my highly-religious, praise-dancing, Bible-quoting grandmother that I mentioned earlier. I never thought much about my great-grandparents’ marriage, nor did I have a real opportunity to understand it because I only observed it as a child. However, I do know that they shared many similarities with the married, strong Black couples I have interviewed for my research. They saw their marriage as a sacred bond. As the grandchildren of slaves who were legally unable to marry, they were determined to honor their marital vows and build a family on faith and religious beliefs. I wish that I had been able to witness more of my great-grandparents’ marriage, but I am also thankful because I recognize the privilege of having a strong Black marriage in my family’s history.

When I ask Black couples who have been married for up to 60 years how they have done it, I am documenting their experiences for the many Black people who, like me, have rarely (or never) witnessed a strong Black marriage. I am documenting their experiences for the many Black couples who, like my wife Tasha and me, are still figuring out how to grow closer together each day. I am documenting their experiences for the many Black communities around the world that, like mine, are burdened by external stressors (such as financial strain, racism, and incarceration) that constantly threaten the stability of the Black family. Every moment, every interaction, and every opportunity has carried a purpose that has brought me exactly where I am, doing exactly what I am called to do at this moment, which is studying strong Black families and loving the journey. 

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that my conversations with Dr. Loren Marks and a weekend with 1,000 pages of narrative data would change my life. Yet, they have. Each time I speak about my research, Black communities and families share with me that there is a need—an unquenchable thirst—for stories of Black couples deeply grounded in faith and unwaveringly dedicated to marriage. I have been a witness and recorder of profoundly sacred family moments where husbands have poured out their hearts to their wives and wives have found comfort in the arms of their husbands. I have been invited to vow renewals, wedding anniversaries, and family dinners. A few months ago, I received word from a husband I had interviewed that his wife had recently died. He thought enough of our interview to let me know the news. For me, that was deeply powerful, and as I revisited their interview, I thanked God for allowing me to share in such a sacred experience. 

I am indebted to Public Square Magazine, as they will be running three additional articles during Black History Month to highlight our team’s work with Black families. I urge you to stay tuned as you hear directly from the voices of strong Black families this month. These articles will focus on: (1) serving others, (2) using faith to cope with racism, and (3) the power of positive humor. As you engage these stories, I invite you not simply to read them, but to receive them. Allow the lived faith of these families to speak to you, to teach you, and to bless you and those around you. These stories are not ours to own, only to share. They are reminders that Black love grounded in faith can be profoundly powerful— capable of overcoming even the highest hurdles attempting to impede familial stability. May their faith strengthen yours, and may we continue to go forward as one people, as brothers and sisters, just as civil rights leader John Lewis urged us to do. 

The post Studying Strong Black Marriages Changed My Own appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

The Serpent as a Sacred Symbol

In many ancient civilizations, the serpent was a symbol of kings, royalty, and gods. You can see this on the front of the Egyptian Pharaoh’s crown and in the Mesoamerican legend of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. 

It is also a symbol of Christ. The scripture story of Moses’ serpent devouring the Egyptians’ serpents conveyed a powerful theological message that Jehovah is the superior serpent. As Latter-day Saint scholar Andrew Skinner points out, this story testifies of Christ’s supremacy over counterfeit powers.

This context makes it deeply significant that Satan appeared to Eve as a serpent in the Garden. He was appearing as a counterfeit of Christ. Genesis teaches: “Now the serpent was more subtle (cunning, crafty, clever) than any beast of the field” (ESV), setting up the serpent as a counterfeit messenger—appearing authoritative while steering souls away from Christ. Moses 4:6 adds, “Satan put it into the heart of the serpent (for he had drawn away many after him,) and he sought also to beguile Eve.” 

The Brass Serpent and the Lesson of Misplaced Worship

The serpent appears again early in the Old Testament. We read in the book of Numbers that “the people spoke against God and Moses,” asking, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food” (ESV).

God responded to their lack of faith by sending “fiery” (poisonous) serpents into their camp, and people began dying. When the Israelites repented and asked Moses to pray for deliverance, the Lord instructed Moses to make a “serpent of bronze” and fasten it to the top of a pole so that whoever looked upon it would live.

Why would the Israelites worship something meant to point them to the Lord? Did they forget whom they truly worshiped? Similarly, do we forget whom we really worship and find ourselves idolizing good things that were meant to lead us to Christ?

When the Means Become the End

Some things intended to point us to Christ, such as the Church, the Prophet and apostles, the scriptures, church programs, local priesthood leaders, the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, and even commandments, can sometimes inadvertently become like the brass serpent. They bring us to Christ, but when we treat them as salvific in and of themselves, we risk idolizing them. The Pharisees exemplified what idolizing commandments looks like.

I’m not suggesting anyone does this deliberately, but in our valiant effort to teach members and children to fully participate in church, follow the prophet, and read the scriptures, we sometimes create a culture where these good and righteous things are assumed to be the end goal instead of the means to the end. 

What Does It Mean That the Church Is “True and Living”?

But don’t we say things like, “The Prophet will never lead us astray,” “The Book of Mormon is the most correct of any book,” and “The Church is the only true Church?” Yes, but those statements require context.

When we say the Church is “true,” what do we mean? It has the ordinances of the Priesthood, is led by Christ through revelation to His servants, and teaches salvific doctrine. It is divine, it is Christ’s Church. Many hear ‘true’ as ‘flawless’: perfectly accurate scriptures, faultless programs, decisions exactly as God would make them. In other words, we interpret “true” as factually binary, all right or all wrong. Many members even feel proud of that idea, believing that all other sects are abominable and all preachers corrupt.

But what happens when the Church changes policies, reverses decisions, or rolls out a less effective program? What do we do when someone says something hurtful, when leaders contradict each other, or when members feel hurt or isolated within church culture?

The problem with this true or false thinking is that when people encounter a problem in the Church, they often feel they have no choice but to leave, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The assumption is that a divine institution should have no human error, turning every mistake into a potential crisis of faith.

D&C 1:30 states that this is the only “true and living” Church. We often define “true” as “unchanging” or “factually accurate,” but the qualifying word “living” complicates that definition. Another meaning of “true” is “to make level, square, balanced, or concentric; to restore to accuracy or form,” which gives the word a more dynamic, living sense. “Truing a wheel,” for example, means adjusting the spokes so it spins straight and steady, free of wobble. 

Perhaps the Church being “true” is like a bicycle wheel, pointed in the right direction, generally straight, yet occasionally needing adjustment. We have to pump flat tires, straighten dents, and realign spokes to keep it true. And as we ride, we make countless small course corrections that keep us moving toward our destination.

To call the Church “living” points to continuing revelation, but it also implies correction, growth, and healing. Recent changes to temple language and partnerships with the NAACP are examples.

The Church is a vehicle to salvation, like a car. Compared with others in the lot, it’s the best one. It’s not perfect or the biggest or fastest, and it has dents to buff out. But it’s reliable, offers upgrades, and has the best safety features. We get weekly gas fill-ups and 24-hour roadside assistance. Each model year improves, and it even includes a heavenly OnStar call button. The best feature may be the eternal warranty.

Prophets, Fallibility, and the Divine Filter

In the Old Testament, the Lord summoned Gideon to free Israel from Midianite oppression. Gideon raised an army of 32,000, but God told him that was too many, since He wanted no one else to take the glory. After reducing the army to 300, they triumphed. Yet the people gave Gideon the credit, saying, “Rule over us, for you have delivered us.” Gideon replied, “I will not rule over you, the Lord shall rule over you.”

Latter-day Saint scholar and writer Terryl Givens, in The Crucible of Doubt, observes that such hero worship is common in human history and even within our Church. He cites the old joke that Catholics claim the Pope is infallible but no one believes it, while Latter-day Saints claim the Prophet is fallible but no one believes it. The notion that prophets are infallible specimens of virtue and perfection is “neither scriptural nor reasonable,” Givens writes.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf likewise acknowledged, “We openly acknowledge that in nearly 200 years of Church history… there have been some things said and done that could cause people to question…. And, to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the Church have simply made mistakes.”

Elder D. Todd Christofferson added that “not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. … Often it represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, not meant to be official or binding.” 

Scripture reinforces that God speaks to us according to our language and understanding (see 2 Nephi 31 and D&C 1). Revelation filters through human personalities and paradigms. Joseph Smith acknowledged this, and Moroni echoed it on the title page of the Book of Mormon: “If there are faults, they are the mistakes of men.”

So what does divinity look like filtered through mortals? I find the metaphor of stained glass fitting. Depending on its color and design, the light passing through is beautiful and divine, but still filtered. The filtering makes it unique. Just because there’s glass doesn’t mean the light isn’t divine. Consider how divine inspiration manifests differently through the “stained glass” of Neal A. Maxwell, Brigham Young, Sheri Dew, Jeffrey R. Holland, Gordon B. Hinckley, Bruce R. McConkie, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, or Sharon Eubank, and through your own ward members.

God uses flawed vessels because that’s all He has, but also to teach humility and redirect our worship. He told Joseph Smith in D&C 121: 1, “For unto this end have I raised you up, that I might show forth my wisdom through the weak things of the earth.” Elder Jeffrey R. Holland reminded us, “Imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with… and when you see imperfection, remember that the limitation is not in the divinity of the work.” 

The Lord built checks and balances into His system, councils, quorums, companionships, presidencies, and marriages. Elder Boyd K. Packer noted, “These procedures protect the work from the individual weaknesses apparent in all of us.” 

Two Common Errors in Faith

We tend to err in two ways. First, we don’t take the prophet, the Church, or the scriptures seriously enough. Many of us fail to fully embrace the blessings of following the Brethren, participating in Church, and feasting on scripture. President Nelson warned that “we should not put question marks where the Prophet has put periods.” 

The second error is what New Testament scholar Darrell Bock calls “brittle fundamentalism,” assuming the Church, prophets, or scriptures must be perfect, then losing faith when confronted with imperfection. If we think the Church must be all true or all false, it’s easy to walk away when we find flaws. 

The Value of Honest Questions

To those wrestling with doubts, your questions are valid. There is nothing wrong with you. Questions are how we learn. Nearly every revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants began with a question. The First Vision began with a question.

Uncertainty is uncomfortable, but sincere inquiry is part of discipleship. Answers may come quickly, slowly, or not at all, which is why faith is essential to spiritual growth. Joseph Smith taught that “a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.” Perhaps part of that sacrifice is placing our complaints and unanswered questions on the altar, trusting that God values honest wrestling as much as easy belief.

Creating a Culture Safe for Seekers

A living church must also be a safe place for sincere seekers. If faith is meant to grow through honest inquiry rather than brittle certainty, then questions should not be treated as threats. In practice, however, some members quietly fear that voicing doubts will brand them as disloyal or spiritually weak.

Yet the Restoration itself models a different pattern. Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught, “Inquiry is the birthplace of testimony. … Asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a precursor of growth.” Faith that cannot tolerate sincere questions risks confusing devotion with defensiveness.

Mature discipleship makes room for complexity without abandoning commitment. Over time, faith may move from simplicity to complexity and, ideally, return to a deeper, humbler simplicity (see Hafen, Faith is Not Blind). Creating space for that process does not weaken the Church. It honors the fact that a true and living faith must also be patient, charitable, and resilient.

Triangulating Truth

We must utilize each of these sources rather than idolize them.

Choosing to Believe

I’ve chosen the gospel of Christ as the reality on which I’ll depend for salvation. I believe this Church is the best vehicle to reach that destination. I believe because I choose to, not because of flawless logic. I have felt the Holy Spirit confirm the truth to me on many occasions.

My testimony waxes and wanes, as everyone’s does. Sometimes it nears certainty; other times it leans on faith alone. Yet even in weakness, it calls me to keep trying, to keep seeing light through stained glass.

The post When Symbols Become Idols: Remembering What Points Us to Christ appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Download Print-Friendly Version

Joseph Smith often spoke of miraculous things the way others might speak of the weather. Details that would have sent people reeling were, for him, offered in passing. He described visions, angelic visitors, and heavenly councils with the ease of someone reporting familiar events. When asked about sacred mysteries, he didn’t pause to dramatize. He simply answered. In 1832, in the early spring dust of frontier Ohio, Joseph sat with a few companions and dictated a short theological text. It slipped in quietly, without an announcement. The document, later called A Sample of Pure Language, read more like a spiritual note passed across the room than a formal revelation. Because it wasn’t a revelation.

The topic began with a single question: “What is the name of God in the pure language?”  Joseph’s reply was immediate: “Awman. The Being which made all things in all its parts.” There was no preface, no citation. Just a name, resting between Joseph’s memory and revelation. The spelling later settled as Ahman, and that name began to ripple into hymns, into revelations, into sacred places. A second question followed: “What is the name of the Son of God?” Joseph responded: “The Son Awman, the greatest of all the parts of Awman, except Awman.” The document is compact and unfinished. It offers no grammatical rules, no dictionary, no syntax. But it leaves a pattern. Ahman. Son Ahman. Sons Ahman.

William W. Phelps recognized this. He referred to the document as a specimen of the pure language and copied it into a letter to his wife. Soon, he began to write hymns invoking the name Ahman and included it in editorial work on church publications (Church History Catalog, MS 8532). When preparing the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 78:20), Joseph inserted the phrase “saith Son Ahman.” It wasn’t in the original manuscript, but reflected his evolving vocabulary of Edenic language. For those familiar with the earlier version, the meaning was clear. The language of Eden had been quietly woven into formal scripture. (See Jensen, pp. 385-386.)

In 1838, Joseph declared a valley in Missouri to be Adam-ondi-Ahman, revealed to him by God. The name implied that Adam once stood there with Ahman. The structure mirrored Semitic naming traditions. The revelation gave no explicit definition, but the sense was immediately understood. Adam once stood in the presence of God in that very place. W. W. Phelps had already invoked the name in hymns. Orson Pratt, years later, affirmed what he had learned from the Prophet and the early brethren: that Ahman was a name by which God had been known to Adam. The valley became sacred for what had occurred there, but even more so for what was promised to come. It was understood as the place where the first covenant between heaven and earth had been made, and where that covenant would someday be fulfilled.

What started as a brief Q&A in an Ohio notebook grew into a network of names, rooted in the identity of God, spreading through doctrine, scripture, and song. And yet, the deeper structure of it all remained unspoken. Joseph never laid out the grammar of the pure language. What is left is a set of terms, offered plainly, but arranged with care. By the early 1840s, Joseph Smith entered a new season of instruction. In Nauvoo, he spoke more freely about the nature of God, the structure of eternity, and the roles of divine beings. Revelation came in stages. Some teachings were delivered from the pulpit, while others took shape in more intimate settings. One such setting was the Nauvoo Lyceum, a circle of trusted Saints who explored theology in dialogue with Joseph’s reflections. Joseph often used these moments to teach the process by which he himself received revelation. From these accumulated moments, Joseph began to articulate a divine hierarchy and establish structures that reflected it. Priesthood quorums, the Relief Society, and the vision of an earthly Zion all emerged from this process. They were designed to mirror the divine order of the Elohim as described in the councils of heaven. (See Psalm 82:1; “Nauvoo Lyceum Minutes”; Bushman, pp. 419-430; Flake, ch. 3.)

According to William P. McIntire, who recorded the moment in his journal, Joseph told the group: “The Great God has a name by which He will be called, which is Ahman.” And then he explained that when someone sought divine instruction, when one prayed, there was power in understanding God with a name as a being like Adam. God made mankind in His own image, Joseph said, and that knowledge could become a key to unlocking divine communication. It was a frame of reference. Ahman was the God who looked like Adam, and who still bore that familial connection in His title. Ahman is then a title reflecting the theological pattern Joseph Smith often taught in which the name of God shares a familial relationship with humanity.

Lorenzo Snow later expressed this pattern in a now-famous couplet: “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may become.” Joseph confirmed this principle in his King Follett Discourse, teaching that God was once a mortal being and that mortals, through progression, could become like Him. The name Ahman thus aligns with Joseph’s understanding of revelation as relational. It echoed the belief that humans are not distant from the divine but are deeply connected to it across time, form, and potential.

The Hebrew Bible follows a similar pattern. Names like Daniel, Ezekiel, Elijah, and Adonijah embed divine titles, El, Yah, Adonai, within personal missions. Joseph Smith had no formal training in ancient onomastics, yet he intuited what many philologists later confirmed: sacred names carry layered, relational meaning (Alter, and Noegel). Some Latter-day Saint writers later linked Ahman with “Man of Holiness,” a divine title from the Book of Moses (McConkie, p. 22, and Stapley). The Son was then called “Son of Man,” meaning Son of the Man of Holiness, a theology of relationship encoded in language. For Joseph, the name simply belonged. He offered it without preface or explanation, as if it had always been there. And in a way, it had. This brief note, later titled A Sample of Pure Language, was not a revelation in the formal sense. But it became a spark. Ben Spackman describes revelation as a layered reality, glimpsed in visions, refined through translation, and shaped by years of reflection. That is what this was. A moment of clarity inside a much larger process. 

The name Ahman reflects how Joseph’s revelations often began. Rarely given in a grand vision, but with a question or phrase that opened space for inquiry. It was about being drawn into the pattern. For Joseph and the Saints, this small note became a theological key. It spurred conversations, inspired edits, clarified doctrines, and formed part of the sacred lexicon of Restoration scripture. The name itself is less a solution than an invitation to think relationally, to seek divine patterns, to follow meaning as it accumulates. Revelation, for Joseph, was not something dropped from heaven. It was something shaped by effort. The Restoration came word by word, name by name.

The post The Valley Where Adam Stood with God appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

That specific sacrifices, rituals, feasts, and other religious practices were central parts of its covenant with YHWH was beyond doubt. Israel’s sacred texts clearly outlined how and in what way Israel was to worship the God of the Exodus and Sinai. (See, for instance, Exodus 12:14; 13:13; 20:22-23:33; Exodus 34:11-26; Deuteronomy 12-26; Leviticus 17-26 as a start.) And, apparently, Israel was largely doing the things it had been asked to do. While it was certainly not perfect in every respect, Israel  seems to have been keeping Sabbath, practicing temple rituals, including sacrifices, and holding many of the appropriate festivals. 

And yet, multiple prophets challenged Israel’s adherence to the very laws and ordinances that were part of this prophetically-given covenant guide. Prophet after prophet challenged Israel even as Israel apparently kept the laws and ordinances it was given. Picking up where the question above leaves off, Isaiah continues voicing God’s view of these practices:

“I [the LORD] am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats … Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.”

To be clear, the LORD does more than just summarily dismiss Israel’s worship practice; the LORD says that these practices—the sacrifices, rituals, and feasts they are under obligation to do as part of the covenant—are “iniquity” and an “abomination, and that “my soul hateth” them. This scathing condemnation concludes with the LORD saying, “I will hide mine eyes from you … I will not hear you.”

And Isaiah was not alone in portraying God’s displeasure with Israel’s worship. We see similar language in the book of Amos. Amos frames it this way:

“I [the LORD] hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.”

And Hosea says simply: “They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of mine offerings, and eat it; but the LORD accepteth them not.” 

Like Isaiah, Amos and Hosea portray the LORD as more than just critiquing the act of worship—with the Lord very clearly despising Israel’s feasts, refusing to accept (or even regard!) its offerings and sacrifices, and calling its songs and music of praise “noise” that “I will not hear.”

The prophet Micah takes a different approach but delivers the same basic message as his prophetic contemporaries. After articulating all the things that the LORD had done for Israel from Egypt onward, Micah asks Israel a series of stinging rhetorical questions that serve to undermine Israel’s approach to worship. Says Micah:

“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? … Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

The clear answer to Micah’s questions about whether God is pleased by the prospect of “thousands of rams,” “ten thousands of rivers of oil,” or even “my firstborn” is no. This over-the-top zealousness is not only insufficient but is, itself, a source of God’s disapproval. Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micha all make clear that, despite Israel’s apparent devotion to the sacrifices, rituals, feasts, and other religious practices which were central parts of its covenant with YHWH, God is displeased with Israel.

Another explanation for Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah’s critique, which does not seem to   fully capture what was taking place, is the notion that Israel was knowingly “going through the motions”—they were guilty of willful hypocrisy. That is to say, that in offering sacrifices or participating in festivals, Israel was not actually worshiping God but instead simply fulfilling outward requirements without any deeper covenantal connection. Yet, in my view, this does not seem to be the primary source of the problem either. 

Yes, it was certainly the case that Israel was commanded to love and worship the LORD and to keep the Sinai teaching in their respective hearts, and that did not always happen. (When the act of worship becomes more important than the purpose of worship, what I have previously called ecclesiolatry, we stray into potential idol worship, a practice many Hebrew Bible prophets condemn.) In fact, highlighting Israel’s penchant for a straying focus, a central hope in Jeremiah’s view of restoration is that Israel will be given a “new heart.” All of that is correct. However, while all of this might be true, hypocrisy does not seem to be the core problem that resulted in such strong language from Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah. Only in Amos (and only in one verse) is there any indication that Israel was not focused on worshiping God. Indeed, I think it is more likely that the people believed that they were doing things properly. The people may have felt like they were worshiping God through the required performances. That is to say: Israel understood itself as keeping the commandments. In fact, I think a key indication that Israel felt like its adherence to sacrifices, rituals, feasts, and other religious practices was in-line with its covenant requirements is the very fact that Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah had to use such dramatic language to get Israel’s attention. So, what is it that Israel needed to do differently?

Fortunately, in the same way that Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah were direct with Israel when it came to expressing the LORD’s displeasure, these four prophets were similarly direct with Israel when it came to stating what Israel needed to do differently. And what was that? Put briefly: Israel needed to exercise justice, righteousness, and mercy. Here is how each of the four prophets expresses this: 

“Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. … Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness” (Isa 1:17, 27).

“But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24).

“For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8).

My sense, especially in light of Ezekiel and Ezra’s view of the importance of Israel’s ritual practices referenced above, is that God is not rejecting Israel’s method of worship, nor is God (for the most part) impugning the motivation behind Israel keeping of the required sacrifices, rituals, feasts, and other religious practices. Rather, Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah suggest that Israel needed to do a better job practicing what Jesus would call (eight centuries later!) the “weightier matters” of the Sinaic teachings. The core problem of Israel—according to Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah—was the lack of justice, righteousness, and mercy. Given the centrality of these ideas in the Hebrew Bible, it is worth briefly exploring what these terms mean.

Mishpat, Tzedeq, Hesed

Justice: If said with just the right inflection, the word “justice” feels punitive. It’s what happens to people when they do something wrong; “justice is served” could be a superhero’s catchphrase when she nabs the bad guy. In the modern Latter-day Saint community, that notion is broadened a little, and “justice” is something closer to a synonym for “fair” or “equitable.” For example, the phrase “God is just” for many Latter-day Saint folks means something like “God gives you what you deserve (good or bad).” However, both uses are worlds away from what the 8th century BCE prophets Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah meant when they used that word. 

The word we translate as “justice” (or “judgment” or “justly”) comes from the Hebrew word mishpat. Mishpat, in the Hebrew Bible—and as used by Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah in the verses above—reflects the idea of ensuring that the weakest members of society are protected from exploitation. Usually, the term is used in connection with groups like widows, orphans, resident aliens, or poor, and often in contexts where there are clear power differentials. For instance, during some sort of civil dispute, a person who exercises mishpat will take the side of widows or orphans and defend them against those who are more powerful. Or, as another example, if a member of the community had to sell their family’s land or becomes subject to debt bondage a person who exercises mishpat will redeem the property that had been sold or free Israelites from their debt bondage. In the Hebrew Bible, “justice” most often points to a social obligation to protect the weak and powerless from exploitation. 

Righteousness: In modern-day usage, “righteousness” is often associated with personal piety. That is to say, righteousness is an inward characteristic. “Righteous” is sometimes synonymous with “orthodox.” In the Latter-day Saint community, righteousness may be associated with maintaining a current temple recommend and studying the scriptures, and praying regularly. Someone is “righteous” when they follow the prophet and keep the commandments; these actions indicate their inward commitment.

However, Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah were talking about something different when they used this word. In the verses above, tzedeq is the Hebrew word that is translated into the English word “righteousness” (and its derivatives). Like mishpat, tzedeq connotes a social obligation. As used by Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah, tzedeq is characterized by the idea of proactively caring for those who are disadvantaged or pursuing communal flourishing, even when it comes at the expense of self-interest. Tzedeq is often the companion virtue to mishpat. Where justice is protecting the weakest members of society from exploitation (defending them), righteousness is taking steps to help those who need it (uplifting them). In Latter-day Saint vernacular, the term that comes closest to expressing this ideal is probably charity. In the verses above, “righteousness” points to ensuring that those who are on the margins of society are given what they need to prosper and flourish.

Mercy: The word “mercy” is commonly used nowadays to capture the idea of being favored, often undeservedly so. “Mercy” is used to describe the act of helping those whose behavior might not otherwise justify such magnanimity. In this sense, the modern-day usage (perhaps especially in the Latter-day Saint community) of “mercy” is that it is the opposite of “justice.” If justice is getting what you deserve, then mercy is getting what you do not deserve.  However, just like the words mishpat and tzedeq, this modern-day usage is not necessarily what Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah were expressing in the 8th Century BCE.

Conclusion

Understanding what mishpat, tzedeq, and hesed suggest put us in a better place to understand the remarkable prophetic guidance of Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and Micah. The problem, according to these prophets, seems to be that Israel had failed to recognize that being God’s people required more than adherence to specific sacrifices, rituals, feasts, and other religious practices. Those things were important but not sufficient in and of themselves. What the LORD desired and required of Israel—the things that the LORD also wanted Israel to do—was to protect and bless the people in their community.  The LORD wanted the people of Israel to show all of their neighbors the same deep fidelity and commitment—that is to say, covenantal love—which they had received from the LORD. They were to protect and bless the rich and the poor, the bonded and the free, the Israelite and the stranger. In short, the people of Israel needed to live into the reality that acovenant with God isinherently connected to and reflected by how we treat each other.

In our modern world, this message is needed now more than ever. Though the Latter-day Saint community does a great deal to reach out and help those around us, there are always ways to improve—something encouraged by recent leaders. A deeper appreciation of scripture can help us recognize that we have room to grow. And when we fully embrace the reality that the covenants we make at baptism and in the temple cannot be kept without walking out of the baptismal font and outside of the temple and into a relationship with those who surround us in this earthly existence—that is to say when we fully embrace the recognition that covenants with God are inherently covenants with each other—we will finally be able to follow the guidance that these 8th Century BCE prophets gave to Israel anciently and which still resonate for us today. We live lives of justice, righteousness, and mercy. After all, as Jesus said: 

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

The post Why did God Punish Ancient Israel? appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Isaiah by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, oil on oak panel (ca. 1838)

Every family and community has a few good inside jokes. One such joke among Latter-day Saints is what happens to people after reading the fast-moving narrative of Lehi leaving Jerusalem through the Book of First Nephi … until they “come to the Isaiah chapters.” 

Even under the best of circumstances, the text of this ancient poet can be challenging. Over the weeks ahead, Latter-day Saints will receive a guided tour of this Old Testament book in Come, Follow Me. When some of these same texts are encountered midway through the Book of Mormon, this can likely feel like a seemingly impassable barrier, especially for new students of the scriptures. But even for those with plenty of experience, these chapters can become another kind of barrier—representing for some a kind of ideological wedge that disrupts the earnestness and integrity of their conviction. 

That was the experience Dan Ellsworth had a number of years ago. After successfully navigating that challenge to his faith, this good brother in Virginia felt strongly prompted to create a resource to help others. In what follows, we asked him about this new video project, his motivation for it, and to walk us through its component parts. 

I’ve personally loved the Book of Isaiah ever since my endearing professor Terry Ball opened the eyes of his students to the richness of Hebrew poetry at BYU. And I was intrigued to go a little deeper on what Dan has learned from this deeper dive in Isaiah—and what he hoped it might offer those listening in. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity. 

Jacob Hess: Dan, can you give us a summary backdrop of your personal experience that prompted and motivated this project? 

Dan Ellsworth: Sure. I fell in love with the book of Isaiah years ago when I decided to do a reading of Isaiah 53 at a family Easter gathering. I was deeply struck by the power of the witness I was reading, and I was emotionally overcome. I ended up memorizing Isaiah 53 and reciting it to myself on my commute and in other situations.

But over time, I became aware that a surprising amount of academic scholarship on the Bible contradicts things that we tend to believe about Isaiah, including the actual authorship of the book. This troubled me, and it boiled over in my midlife crisis at the age of 40, a difficult developmental crossroads in my personal faith.

Over time, I applied myself to researching Isaiah scholarship in depth. It was scary and often unsettling, but eventually, I came to a place of much greater understanding of biblical scholarship in general, both its value and its limitations. It’s not an issue that troubles me anymore. But seeing how it continues to trouble other members of our faith, I decided to put together a presentation to help calibrate some more realistic expectations for the field of biblical studies and equip people with a little better toolset for critically evaluating things they read.

JH: What do you hope this video project will accomplish for people who check it out? 

DE: I’m hoping it will accomplish three things: first, help people who are stumbling in their faith due to questions around scripture. I’d like to give them a little breathing room so they can see the value of slow, methodical examination of issues that challenge their faith.

Second, I would like to help us as a people to mature in our approach to prophecy. We (especially in America) sometimes assume that it’s all about me—e.g., “Isaiah is speaking to my concerns, attacking people I dislike, prophesying about my favorite political candidate, and so forth.” Sorry friends, but he’s really not. Isaiah is generally speaking to his people, to Israel over time, and to the nations around Israel. And his message is explicitly apolitical, denouncing the people’s seeking for political alliances over “The waters of shiloah that go softly,” or in other words, the quiet, subtle, protective covenant influence of God. 

That said, Nathaniel Givens recently reminded us that even when prophets are speaking to a particular time and place, they offer patterns that are applicable to other situations. And there is undoubtedly value in the personal “likening” that Nephi encourages for “all scripture”—“that it might be for our profit and learning.” Yet I hope that we as a people can move out of what can sometimes feel like self-centered interpretations of prophecy and spend a lot more time on historical context, seeing how God’s light has shined into other times and places.

Third, I want to help dispense with a myth that is commonly used to attack our faith and comfort the disaffected: the idea that believing scholars hold biases, whereas secular scholarship produces bias-free, neutral works of dispassionate analysis. We presently have some amazing biblical scholars in the Church, and it pains me to see their work dismissed with arguments like s/he teaches at a church school, so their analysis is biased by their religious commitments (… unlike scholars in secular institutions). My presentation offers an overwhelming refutation of this false narrative. Every scholar operates from a paradigm, and we benefit from awareness of that fact.

JH: Isaiah is hard enough to understand, even if you don’t have these larger hang-ups. Is there anything else in these videos that can help others who just want to go deeper in their understanding of Isaiah? 

DE: These videos are focused on a particular question surrounding the field of biblical studies. But one of the points I make in the videos is that when it comes to Isaiah, we can benefit from a deeper understanding of prophecy in the restoration and how restoration scriptures were received and assembled over time. We sometimes open a text like Isaiah and assume that it was produced as a prophet sat down and wrote down his thoughts in a sequence over time, leaving us with a final product.

But there is a lot of evidence that the process that gave us the book of Isaiah looked a lot more like what we see with restoration scripture. Both the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants are texts that were received, handled, edited, and assembled over time by multiple individuals and even teams of people. And as Robert Boylan recently showed in an outstanding piece, prophetic sayings are adapted and modified, and expanded over time for numerous reasons. When we see through the lens of this restoration understanding of scripture, we’re less prone to mental whiplash and confusion when we read a complex book like Isaiah. And we’re also less prone to engage in narrow black-and-white thinking that often leads to loss of trust in the divinely-ordained authority of scripture.

JH: What else has stood out to you after doing this deeper dive on Isaiah? Are there any other takeaways that have strengthened you? 

DE: My biggest takeaway is a personal witness that if I’m sincere and willing to work, God can walk me through very difficult questions. There were times in this process where I was led to specific resources and enabled to see new angles of questions in ways that were far beyond my normal abilities. Paraphrasing the psalmist, I can say from personal experience: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of doubt, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.

JH: Why don’t you walk us through the layout and contents of the video series?  

DE: The first four videos are an introduction to biblical scholarship and the various commitments that shape the work of scholars. The next four are videos addressing specific points of controversy around Isaiah authorship, followed by some concluding thoughts. I then offer a postscript video of some personal thoughts on Isaiah and the Book of Mormon. For each video, there is a page listed here at the blog Nauvoo Neighbor, along with links to resources and slides available to download. [At the bottom, we link to each of them along with an introduction.] 

This series is part of a larger project of mine, a YouTube channel called Latter-day Presentations. There I’m producing content as additional toolsets for believers thinking through challenging issues and questions, and the Isaiah series is a good case study for the kinds of conversations I hope we can have around challenging issues. My hope is that over time, my own work will be like a drop in a bucket, that venues like YouTube will overflow with different sources of quality content for believing-and-sustaining Latter-day Saints.

JH: Any final thoughts for our readers?  

DE: It’s good to be flexible in our thinking, but not so flexible that we never push back against critical claims about our faith, even claims made by competent scholars.

What I hope for Latter-day Saints to understand is that as we engage with scripture and sacred history, we are building mental models of the things that we are studying. Throughout our lives, as we develop as human beings, it’s okay to adjust our mental models. And if we view that kind of gradual learning as shameful or overwhelming, we can be tempted to abandon our mental models altogether. I hope readers understand that this is not necessary. If your engagement with Isaiah this year challenges some aspect of your mental models around scripture and prophets and revelation, that is an opportunity for growth. Embrace it.

Part 1 of the series provides a basic introduction to scholarly division of the book of Isaiah and how it relates to the Book of Mormon, then explores some basic choices that scholars make in their research.

Part 2 explores questions of worldview and how a scholar’s worldview can impact their approach to the biblical text.

Part 3 discusses the reality of bias in biblical studies and the importance of accounting for scholars’ plausibility structures.

Part 4 explores how personal agendas affect research outcomes and the problem of scholarly consensus in biblical studies.

Part 5 offers some background on the book of Isaiah, then explores basic questions of composition and discusses scholarly views of shifts in setting and perspective in the text.

Part 6 discusses questions of linguistics and anachronisms in the text and their relevance for dating the text in support of multiple authorship.

Part 7 discusses intertextuality and the Great Isaiah Scroll at Qumran and how scholars think of these issues in questions of authorship.

In Part 8, I offer some concluding thoughts about appropriate expectations for scholarship.

Post Script: Some thoughts on Isaiah 53, the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon, and other topics.

Here’s the full playlist of videos

The post How the Restoration Can Inform Biblical Scholarship appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

As one psychiatrist, Curt Thompson, puts it, emotions are “not opinions to be countered,” rather they are “true experiences that require attention.” This is because human experience is emotional experience, and emotional experience is human experience.  Emotions are one of the critical ways in which our brain organizes, understands, and anticipates the world around us.  Thus, as a close therapist friend is fond of saying, emotions are neither good nor bad, they are simply information and no different than things like touch and taste.  Emotions just are.  

We in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe in a God whose eternal life includes and incorporates the full spectrum of emotions—the theological language here is that we believe in a God that is passible (“capable of feeling or suffering”). Because of that, coming to know and become like God for us means that we must seek to also learn to include and incorporate the full spectrum of emotional experiences into our continued theosis.

In modern Christian culture generally and Latter-day Saint culture specifically, however, there is a tendency to assign moral value to specific emotions—particularly when it comes to acts of religious practice.  Feelings of gratitude, praise, peace, happiness, thanksgiving, and contentedness, for instance, are associated with “righteousness” and are “good for worship,” whereas feelings of anxiousness, tenseness, anger, sadness, and despair are often associated with “unrighteousness” and are “inappropriate for worship.” Laying aside the many potential reasons for how we got here, the functional result of taking this approach to emotion is a crippling of our personal progression. After all, if we only see a part of our emotional experiences as “fitting “ for our religious practice, that makes it hard to be whole in our relationship with God.  Said another way, when aspects of our emotional lives are seen as inappropriate for our religious practice, we limit our ability to engage in a full and truly open relationship with God and with each other. That cultural constraint is potentially damaging to us all.

The Book of Psalms (or Psalter) explores worship from all its different emotional angles.  Rather than God-talk that is closed to anything but praise, the Psalter opens the door for worship language that encompasses the entirety of the human experience.  So yes, at times, the psalmist is a voice of praise, but at other times the psalmist’s voice is one of lament. At times the psalmist sings songs of thanksgiving, and at other times the psalmist expresses disorientation. And at times, the psalmist embraces God’s dominion over everything, and at other times the psalmist wonders why God feels absent.  This kind of emotional diversity when it comes to worship is unfortunately foreign to modern ears, and the challenge this kind of language presents has led some to simply ‘skip over’ the more difficult psalms (after all, what is one to do with a psalm like 137 … go read it).  But in skipping over the more difficult psalms, we inadvertently close ourselves off to the reality that all emotional states can be a place of worship and that every experience, even (maybe especially) the hard ones, can become a meaningful part of our dialogue with God.

So, what is it about the Psalms that can help us learn this kind of vulnerability before God? Consider the different approaches taken in Psalm 111 (expressing praise) and Psalm 13 (expressing lament).  In the former text, we encounter a psalmist brimming with feelings of peace and contentment: “Praise ye the LORD,” the author shouts, “I will praise the LORD with my whole heart … The works of the LORD are great.” It is not hard to imagine such language coming at the birth of a long-awaited child or the conclusion of a sore trial.  Praise is a central language of worship; this is probably obvious to most. 

Now consider Psalm 13, where we encounter a psalmist near the end of her rope who is burdened by anxiety and pain: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? forever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” the psalmist laments, “How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?” It’s not hard to imagine such language coming at the death of a loved one or from the deepest recesses of an overwhelming trial.  But, remarkably, the Psalms teach us that lament is also a central language of worship.  Lament is the language of one who recognizes that feelings of vulnerability and despair are also sufficient offerings to God; the language of lament gives a way to speak to God authentically when the world is crumbling all around.  The Psalms show us that praise and lament are simply different sides of the human experience, and thus both can be made holy when brought to God.

Again, consider two more psalms: Psalm 100 (expressing thanksgiving) and Psalm 74 (expressing disorientation).  In Psalm 100, we encounter a psalmist for whom all the pieces have finally fallen into place:  “Make a joyful noise unto the LORD,” the psalmist shouts, “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture … be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”  It is not hard to imagine such language coming at the arrival of good fortune (earned or by chance) or the view of a mountain vista.  It’s obvious to most of us, once again, that thanksgiving is another primary language of worship. 

Now consider Psalm 74, where we encounter a psalmist who is struggling to make sense of life’s vagaries: “Why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?” the psalmist wonders, “have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.” It is not hard to imagine such language coming from one who, despite earnest efforts and righteous striving, has suffered misfortune after misfortune and whose world feels chaotic and unsettled (This was likely written in response to the destruction of Jerusalem and the razing of the temple by the Babylonians. Seen in that light, it is not hard to understand the sense of disorientation that permeates this particular text).  This psalm teaches us that disorientation is also a meaningful language of worship.  In the midst of the tempest, feelings of confusion and struggle voiced to God can be given to God like other more positive emotions and thus can become the most sacred of offerings. The psalms show us that thanksgiving and disorientation are simply different sides of the human experience and thus both can be made holy when brought to God.

The point here, and I think a key lesson we can take from the Psalter collectively, is that a real relationship with God must be wholly authentic and wholly complete. Nothing can be held back.  For that to be true, the full spectrum of emotional experience should be included in our worship. 

I want to pause for one moment and address mental illness (which can manifest in a variety of emotional states). I hold out the hope that mental illness (like any illness) can be a catalyst for a deeper encounter with the divine.  That does not mean, however, that individuals who are sick—with any ailment—should forgo seeking the support of licensed, trained professionals when appropriate. Seeking help does not prevent the sacralization of our experience. In fact, one thing the psalms teach us is that all emotional experiences can be offered to God.

In his exploration of another of the more challenging psalms (Psalm 109), scholar Walter Brueggemann observed that the speech of the psalms “is precious because it shows that Israel understood that what is healthily human intersects with what is vitally faithful.” Another Pastor (and Bible translator), Eugene Peterson wrote of how frequently he encounters parishioners who resist honest prayer, assuming “I’m not good enough for this. I’ll wait until I clean up my act and prove that I am a decent person.” Others think that there is “an ‘insider’ language that must be acquired before God takes us seriously in our prayer.” Peterson responds by putting the Psalms in people’s hands and encouraging them to model their prayers after what they see: “This will introduce you to the real thing,” he says. In this way, he helps them understand prayer as the “means by which we get everything in our lives out in the open before God.”  Both Brueggemann and Peterson see in the psalms the same lesson for us: As we embrace the full spectrum of our emotional experience and bring all of it more fully into our worship we create the foundation for deepened, authentic relationships with those around us and with God. 

How wonderful that we don’t have to hide emotionally with God, as we so often do with others around us! Curt Thompson frames it this way: emotion “is one of the most important means by which [we] comprehend [our] experiences in life,” and thus, it is also one of the most important means by which we comprehend our “experience of and with God.”  God does not expect us to slough our human experience (as if it is a skin to be shed) by demanding that we excise the hard emotional experiences of life.  Rather, the miracle of God’s work is to take the intrinsic messiness of our raw humanity and make it into something divine.  Miraculously, this most often seems to happen not by cutting off parts and pieces of what makes us human but by incorporating the entire human experience—including the full spectrum of our emotional experience—into a grand tapestry of restoration and renewal.  This is the message of the Psalms.

The post Trusting God to See Our Whole Heart appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

“I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.”  ~Harry “Give ‘em Hell” Truman

The 2020 U.S. presidential election resulted in one of the most spectacular recent controversies in evangelical Christianity. A number of charismatic evangelical “prophets” proclaimed that God had provided for the electoral victory of Donald Trump. Following Trump’s loss in the election, evangelical discernment commentators like Justin Peters provided lengthy commentary cataloging their failures, treating them in some cases as evidence for the cessationist view that prophetic gifts ceased long ago.

Over the last 72 hours, I have received multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry. I have been labeled a coward, sellout, a traitor to the Holy Spirit, and cussed out at least 500 times. We have lost ministry partners every hour and counting.

Valuable lessons about prophecy can be gleaned from the ministry of Jeremiah Johnson’s namesake, the biblical prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah had a sharp confrontation with the nationalist false prophet Hananiah, who in the name of Yahweh spoke the comforting lie, “I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.” Hananiah, like others before and after him, gained an audience by telling people what they wanted to hear, answering their cravings for security and control in a world that is unpredictable and often frightening. Jeremiah, by contrast, told the people and the political and religious establishment that their turn to pantheism and idolatry was apostasy and forfeiture of divine protection from enemies.

For those seeking to discern true prophets from their counterfeits, flattering messages that affirm our political fantasies should constitute a bright red flag in the messenger.

One of the great brain teasers for Bible translators and interpreters is found in Isaiah 6. After Isaiah sees the Lord and expresses a willingness to represent the Lord to the people, he is given a message that seems to represent a legitimate thwarting of his own prophetic efforts:

Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

Isaiah seems to have been told to engage in prophetic obfuscation. At this time, the people’s spiritual senses were so dull that the prophetic message was to be offered in a way that was not aimed at their turning, their conversion, or their divine healing. Realistically, if the people were offered a message of redemption and spoken in clarity, it would not be valued appropriately. And to receive such a message and reject it in this way would further accelerate the people’s downward spiral away from God. This may help to explain why Isaiah’s communications often seem so cryptic and even confusing; he seems to have understood well the extent to which his message was to be crafted in a way that corresponded to the people’s level of spiritual receptivity.

And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:

That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. (emphasis added here and below). 

Rejection—even angry, violent rejection—by the majority of society has been part of the prophetic call throughout history. To accept a prophetic mantle is to accept persecution; it is to receive the word of God and undertake to share it while often mourning as people burn it in a bonfire of their rival commitments and worldviews. 

For example, the resurrected Christ knew that Saul of Tarsus would eventually become one of the most influential religious figures in history, but His words to Ananias in Damascus were a sobering, realistic view of Paul’s imminent ministry: I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake. The prophetic call is a call to suffer.

And then there is the “soft rejection” the Lord describes to Ezekiel:

They sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.

And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not. And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.

The soft rejection of prophets is often a function of their style. Prophets are rejected because their style is too something: blunt, polite, vague, normal, eccentric, bland, provocative, cheery, corporate, abrasive, or any number of other descriptors. The rejection of Ezekiel fits this pattern; Ezekiel lamented, “Ah Lord God! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables?”). Then there are also the artificially contrived criteria: some people of fundamentalist leanings claim, for example, that Latter-day Saint prophets no longer qualify for the title because they decline to preface their statements with “Thus saith the Lord …” and they almost never offer dramatic public predictions of future events. This is viewed by some as a problem despite the fact that, for example, Elijah and John the Baptist (regarded by Jesus as the greatest prophet to that point in time) spent their prophetic energy responding to present concerns, not unveiling apocalyptic visions of the future.

One salient example.  Fundamentalists aren’t the only ones among us who squirm and wrangle out of a commitment to prophetic teachings. Among Latter-day Saints, some reject the Family Proclamation by claiming it has never been formally canonized as if that has ever been the standard for determining whether or not a prophetic teaching is true or binding. Some use historical criticism, presenting the Family Proclamation and other prophetic teachings as products of a certain time and place and culture, in order to undermine the relevance of those teachings. When people are fully committed to subverting God’s message, prophets can’t win.

The obvious answer is no because critics of the Family Proclamation are not being honest when they pivot to questions of canonization. They have placed their bet on a rival religious ideology that revolves around the prioritization of sexual desire and the obliteration of gender. And in this bet, they are all in. This is why they are extremely careful to avert their eyes from realities like the recent study from Eric Kaufmann showing a rise in mental health problems among LGBT+ youth during a corresponding rise in social acceptance; avert their eyes from the strenuously-held delusion that male and female are meaningless social constructs, even among animals like chickens; and avert their eyes from the current wave of gender chaos fueled by social incentives. Rejection of the Family Proclamation requires denying multiple wide swaths of empirical reality. And if we are waiting for even one single critic of the Family Proclamation to candidly acknowledge these calamities, that looks to be an extremely long wait. Prophets can’t win because, in a sense, they are playing a game that has been rigged in advance by their hearers.

We live in a time when witness testimony of the prophetic mantle in the Church of Jesus Christ has become increasingly direct. Examples include Elder Dean Davies’ eyewitness account of President Gordon B. Hinckley’s selection of a precise temple site; Elder Quentin R. Cook’s bold witness testimony of revelation in the councils of the Church; and Sister Wendy Nelson’s specific testimony of her husband’s revelatory activity. Amid all this, critics of the Family Proclamation find creative ways to assert that this doctrinal statement is an entirely human fabrication not involving revelation at all. In light of increasingly potent witness testimony of the prophetic mantle, I find it far more plausible to believe that the Family Proclamation is exactly what we claim it to be: a universally-binding revelation that addresses problems that most of us could not have imagined when it emerged in 1995. Equally revelatory and binding are current prophetic statements that recognize people’s varied challenges in living the ideals of the Family Proclamation and the need for compassion toward those with varied life experiences and circumstances.

Critics of the Family Proclamation should perhaps consider the counsel given to their spiritual predecessors through Isaiah: “Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled.” In other words, we are welcome to whatever self-generated religion we desire.

A prayer offered by Flannery O’Connor conveys this essential reality:

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon.

…what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.

Flannery O’Connor held deep spiritual wisdom that acknowledges that God is often obscured by our own assumptions and perceptions. In a self-centered religious paradigm, there can be no authentic encounter with God. And in times like Isaiah’s and our own, where people’s spiritual senses are dulled, the prophetic message is often spoken with a frustrating vagueness. This is by design, and in so many ways, it ultimately reflects our lack of receptivity. We must learn to, in the words of Flannery O’Connor, push ourselves aside. This presents both a challenge and opportunity for all of us who take seriously the prophetic mantle in our day.

The post Prophets Can’t Win appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The story of David and Bathsheba has preoccupied readers of the Hebrew Bible for centuries. It has all the makings of a Hollywood production and yet it is a narrative that is relatable and compellingly human. Though the Chronicler seeks to clean up the story of Solomon’s birth by omitting discussion about Uriah and Bathsheba completely (see 1 Chronicles 20),  2 Samuel 11-12 lays out the facts in devastating detail: it is a story of the self-destruction of God’s anointed.  It is also a disturbing narrative that explores heavy, painful, and uncomfortable themes—which, in my view, is exactly why it belongs in our sacred text and is worthy of our continued focus. And, like many stories in the Hebrew Bible, there are a variety of ways in which it can be read and numerous lessons which can be applied.

Understanding the Story as a Latter-day Saint

In my experience attending The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the David and Bathsheba story has been primarily discussed within the context of sexual morality. The salacious nature affair and the intrigue of the ensuing cover-up lend themselves to this reading. Whether it’s seen as a warning against extra-marital sexual relations, a caution against impure thoughts, or an example of what happens when you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, church lessons taught me (and probably many others) to see this David’s action as a violation of what we call the Law of Chastity.  In fact, the June 2022 lesson material for the Church’s Come, Follow Me section covering this story has this same focus. Taking nothing away from this important emphasis, the prophet Nathan offered an additional way to understand why David’s actions were wrong, and it is one that I think is instructive for all of us. But before we get to Nathan’s prophetic response to what David did, let me outline two important facets of the Hebrew Bible that will help contextualize what Nathan says.

 First, central to the commands that God gives Israel on Mount Sinai (which are included in the Torah) is the requirement to pursue justice.  In multiple ways, and in a variety of different contexts, the Torah makes clear that individuals who are part of God’s Torah-guided community are not supposed to exploit, take advantage of, cheat, deceive, or mistreat other members of the community (including the “strangers” who live among them but who are not Israelites).  A life lived according to the Torah requires avoiding unjust actions. Further, the Torah requires Israelites to proactively care for those who are disadvantaged (the widows, the orphans, the resident aliens, the poor, etc.) through actions like forgiving loans, providing the necessities of life, and redeeming property that had been sold or freeing Israelites in debt bondage. A life lived according to the Torah requires that members of the community seek to act justly. So, alongside the detailed ritual obligations (like which kinds of sacrifices to offer and when), the Torah outlines remarkably powerful social obligations that require the community to take care of each other and to pursue communal flourishing (even at the expense of self-interest—see Note #1).  As one good, concrete example consider Boaz’s actions toward Naomi and Ruth.  Boaz is representative of what an ideal, Torah-centered life looks like: Boaz both avoids exploiting Naomi and Ruth’s situation for his own gain and proactively provides for their well-being despite the fact that Ruth is from Moab and even though Boaz had to expend his own resources.

You May Also Read: Building Israel: The First Few Millennia Are Always Hardest

Nathan’s Prophetic Condemnation

With this backdrop, we can return to Nathan’s reaction to David’s actions. After learning that David had taken Bathsheba and tried to cover up his indiscretion, eventually having Uriah killed, the LORD sent Nathan to deliver a message.  Here is a version of that exchange which I have recrafted in more modern language to emphasize the core message of 2 Samuel 12:1-13). 

Speaking to David, the prophet Nathan says something like: 

David, listen to this: There were two men living in the same city; one was rich and the other poor. The rich man had many, many animals … multiple flocks and herds in fact. The poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb. The poor man had raised and cared for this lamb since it was a baby; the lamb grew up alongside his own children and even ate his food and drank out of his own cup.  The poor man loved the lamb so much that it was considered part of the family. Well, one day a traveler came to visit the rich man.  The rich man wanted to host the traveler but did not want to use one of his own animals to feed him, so instead, he took the poor man’s lamb and killed it, and fed it to the traveler. 

David responds to Nathan with obvious anger and indignation: 

As the Lord liveth, the rich man that did this should be put to death!  What’s more, he should restore the poor man fourfold because of his callous and pitiless actions.

Nathan then responds to David accusingly: 

You are the rich man!  Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: I anointed you king and I saved you when Saul tried to kill you.  I gave you all that Saul had, including his wives.  I made you king over all of Israel and Judah … and if you had wanted more and asked for it, I would have given it to you. Why, then, did you despise Me and do evil?  You had Uriah the Hittite killed with a sword and have taken his wife to be your wife. Because of this, your family will be afflicted with violence and internal strife.  You tried to hide what you did, but all of Israel will see what happens to you now.

David ultimately acknowledges to Nathan: “I have sinned against the Lord.”

So, what is the lesson here? As noted at the outset, there is clearly a lesson in this narrative about the law of chastity. Setting aside the issues of David’s multiple wives and concubines (see Jacob 2:23-24 and D&C 132:38-39 which each discuss this), because Bathsheba was married David violated clear prohibitions against adultery.  But I think Nathan’s response to David points to additional lessons. On one level, this revelatory condemnation focuses on how Uriah was treated. For most of the critical parts of the narrative, Uriah is absent and thus unable to protect his family. While Uriah was a way serving as a soldier in David’s army, David “took” Uriah’s wife for himself (it is the same verb in Hebrew as the one used in 1 Samuel 8 referenced above, laqach) and there was nothing Uriah could do about it. Even when called back from battle, Uriah’s adherence to tradition and his sense of loyalty stand in stark contest to David’s deceit (2 Samuel 11:8-13).  To be clear, David’s taking of Bathsheba was not because David needed another wife—at this point in the story it is unclear how many wives and concubines David actually had (see 2 Samuel 3:2-5 and 2 Samuel 5:13), but he probably a lot of them— rather, it was because David simply wanted Bathsheba for himself.  Like the rich man in Nathan’s story, David wanted something that someone else had, and like the rich man, David had the means to take it. So, he did.  So not only was this act a violation of Uriah’s marriage, but it was also contrary to David’s Torah obligations.

On another, and I think deeper level, there is also clearly a lesson about the damage that follows when the powerful (socially, culturally, economically, politically, and institutionally) exploit the vulnerable. And, of all the people caught up in the story, Bathsheba was the most vulnerable and the one with the least social power. This is clear in a few ways. For example, Bathsheba is introduced in the narrative as, simply, “a woman” (2 Samuel 11:2).  So, as the story opens, Bathsheba is a nameless woman that is cast as a mere object of King David’s desire. It is a few verses later, only after David has taken an interest in her, that we learn her name. But even when we learn her name, she is not just “Bathsheba,” rather she is Bathsheba “the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite” (2 Samuel 11:3)—her identity is not hers alone, but instead she is expressly bound to two different men (this is not unique to Bathsheba; with some rare exceptions women of that time were often regarded as little more than property).  Further, her marriage to a Hittite (not an Israelite) could have also put her in a position of having even less social standing. All of this to say, Bathsheba was vulnerable to being exploited. She is like the “little ewe lamb” in Nathan’s story. And exploited she was. Like the lamb taken by the rich man, there is no indication that Bathsheba had any choice in the matter when “David sent messengers” to her home (2 Samuel 11:4).  As scriptures say, David simply “took” (again, laqach) Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:4).  When the king calls, you go. And perhaps the most painful part of the whole story—and the part that most reveals the deep exploitation inherent in this story—is that, after David “lay[s] with her,” the narrative makes clear that David was not affected by this affair because “she was purified from her uncleanness” (2 Samuel 11:4).  Said another way, the narrative makes sure we all understand David was all clear of ritual impurity because Bathsheba had bathed herself appropriately (see Leviticus 15:19-28).  Like the lamb (who never has a voice in Nathan’s oracle and whose view of the actions taken against it are never considered), there is no attempt to consider Bathsheba’s perspectives or feelings on what happened to her at all. But, make no mistake about it, damage was done.

Read Also: Seeing Old and New Things in Isaiah

Thus, Nathan seems to be teaching David that a central part of David’s sin was that David abused his power and exploited the very people he should have been protecting.  Nathan helped David see that the way he had acted toward Uriah and Bathsheba was exactly contrary to how the Torah says he should have acted. Uriah, one of David’s soldiers, was faithfully serving David. Yet rather than treating Uriah justly, David took advantage of Uriah’s absence to take Bathsheba.  And Bathsheba, one of David’s subjects, was potentially vulnerable due to her husband’s absence. Yet rather than provide protection for Bathsheba, David exploited that vulnerability for his own pleasure.  In taking these actions, David did exactly what Samuel warned the Israelites that kings would do: he took what he wanted in direct contradiction to what the Torah demanded of adherents. So, yes, on one level this story is about the Law of Chastity, but it is also about our responsibility to live justly. And for Nathan, it seems, David’s lack of justice seems to be the more serious problem.

Modern Lessons: Building Zion Through Justice and Equality

The kind of life David should have lived, and the life we have been called to live as Jesus’s followers is one in which this kind of exploitation does not exist, and inequities are remedied.  In fact, part of what makes a Zion community is the eradication of such exploitation. Consider the description of the Nephites following Jesus’s visit: “Every [person] did deal justly one with another. And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift” (4 Nephi 1: 2-3).  Similarly, in the City of Enoch, “they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them” (Moses 7:18).   In both of these cases, true Christian living is characterized by a lack of exploitation and proactively correcting any inequality that may have existed. In short, they lived as the prophet Micah said they should: “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8).  Nathan’s challenge to David is as pertinent now as it was more than two millennia ago. I hope we can all take it to heart.

Notes:

1. For a book-length discussion of this topic see Jeremiah Unterman, Justice for All, How the Jewish Bible Revolutionary Ethics, 2017 (Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia, PA).

2. Yet, even after hearing this, the people said, “we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.”

Related Articles

• An Ode to the Old Testament
• Latter-day Saints Need the Old Testament
• Why did God Punish Ancient Israel?

The post David’s Other Sin with Bathsheba appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

As a believer, my fundamental interest in scripture is the proposition that it contains the Word of God. And the Word of God is authoritative. If scripture weren’t authoritative then it would be pointless to me as scripture. (It might still be important in other senses: as literature, or art, or cultural heritage.) 

But scriptural authority is naturally limited by its ambiguity. That is, an unknown statement has no practical authority. And so to the extent that we are not sure what a particular passage in scripture is saying, its authority is circumscribed.

This creates perverse incentives. For those who wish to emphasize authority, there is a temptation to downplay ambiguity. To insist that meanings are transparent (even when they are far from clear) because that transparency is a necessary precondition for an expansive view of scriptural authority. 

The same dynamic plays out in reverse. For those who wish to de-emphasize scriptural authority, there’s a pitfall of exaggerated ambiguity. Of insisting meaning is opaque (even when it’s fairly obvious) because that opacity is a convenient pretext for a parsimonious view of scriptural authority.

Of course, this kind of selective expansiveness and parsimony are not only applied generically, but also to specific stories, passages, or themes that people wish to defend or attack. We believers all tend to have expansive views of scriptural authority about the bits we think agree with us and much narrower views when it comes to those other parts we find less accommodating.

This means that all debates over scriptural interpretation have higher stakes than it first appears. Questioning a received interpretation entails upgrading the apparent ambiguity which in turn downgrades the practical authority of scripture. Resolving a long-standing ambiguity entails downgrading the apparent ambiguity which in turn upgrades the practical authority of scripture.

Now, this upgrading and downgrading of scriptural authority isn’t intrinsically problematic. In the Latter-day Saint tradition, scripture is authoritative, but not infinitely so. It shares space with the teachings of prophetic leaders and auxiliary heads (we call General Authorities) and with an individual spiritual witness. So it’s not at all clear that there is a “right” amount of authority for scripture to have. Why, then, is downgrading or upgrading scriptural authority so contentious?

Another reason this can all be so fraught is that we tend to make temporary peace with the scriptures as we understand them. Whatever a person’s balance of authority/ambiguity happens to be at any point in time, it is almost by definition the balance that is least troubling for them. This means any further change will likely lead to more (at least initial) turbulence than the present equilibrium.

This is why debate over matters that would otherwise seem tangential can become so heated. It makes sense that a passage over, say, sexuality would draw a lot of heat. But what’s the connection between a global flood or creation in seven, 24-hour days that cause so much angst? It’s not the issues themselves. It’s the status of scriptural authority that is fueling much of the tension. If you thought the interpretation of those stories was self-evident and suddenly it’s called into question, then the ambiguity/authority thread has been pulled, and that will rile people up.

It seems largely accidental to me that most people who think scripture is fairly self-evident (who have a high authority, low ambiguity approach) tend to embrace so-called literalist interpretations like a young earth and a global flood, and a historical Adam. We could just as easily envision an alternate history of the growth of Christian culture where non-literal interpretations were the dogmatic champion, and someone asking whether or not the Flood had a historical basis would be viewed as a dangerous threat to scriptural authority. The problem isn’t which answers are being questioned, it’s that answers are being questioned.

The ironic tragedy is that all this controversy about what scripture says makes it harder to learn what scripture is, in fact, trying to tell us. We live in an environment where some folks react to any interpretive question as though it’s a nefarious attempt to undermine scriptural authority. And at least some folks are deliberately, selectively confused about scripture precisely because that’s what they’re trying to do (undermine scriptural authority). 

So where does that leave the folks who want to accept scriptural authority but also want to actually understand the scriptures, and therefore go through the tough work of accepting what ambiguity really does exist and trying to sift the text from the culture?

It’s a tough prospect, but here’s one thing that I’ve learned that can help: always provide a superior interpretation for the interpretation that you’re critiquing. 

Consider the Flood. I don’t remember the first time I was taught this story, but one way or another the first position I can recall having was an embrace of a literal, global flood because I thought that’s what the scriptures said. Over time, I learned that my assumptions about how to read the story were largely unfounded and I let the “global” qualifier go, but some historical basis still seemed really important because I didn’t have any other way of interpreting the text that made the story meaningful. 

This is a place I think a lot of believing, non-experts find themselves in. We can see that the particular views we’ve held in the past are suspect, but we aren’t willing to let them go in exchange for nothing. That’s not sheer stubbornness. It’s an insistence that scripture matters. Sure, not every single word or verse or story, but the big stuff (including the Flood) is there for a reason. And it’s difficult—and probably inadvisable—to let go of the best understanding you have just because it’s flawed. All interpretations are likely to be flawed to at least some extent. So telling me, “Your interpretation of the Flood is wrong for X and Y” is insufficient to get me to totally abandon it. What I need to hear is a better interpretation.

When it comes to the Flood, it’s just been this year that I have (largely thanks to Ben Spackman) come to understand the concept of what he calls the cosmological Flood. This is the superior interpretation I was waiting for. It is more faithful to the text (in its cultural context) and there’s a clear sense of why the story is important and what it is doing in the Bible. Now I am ready to basically set aside the global/local debate, but I couldn’t really grasp its irrelevance until I saw a genuinely new way of reading Genesis. 

I can imagine a lot of scholars would sort of smack their foreheads over this. But it’s one thing to have an expert say, “That’s not how the story would have been understood in its original cultural context” and it’s quite another to have an expert say, “But this is …” and go on to provide enough of a framework that I have something new to hold onto. This need to understand for myself is indispensable to maintain a personal investment in scripture. I can just take an expert’s word for it on a lot of matters, but not a matter of my own faith. For that, everybody is responsible for building their own, and an expert can only be an advisor in an endeavor that could not and should not be outsourced.

So what I’d like to see from scholars is an emphasis on constructive critique. I’ve already mentioned Ben Spackman, and he introduced me to John H. Walton who is doing the same thing. N. T. Wright is another. These folks often challenge the current dogma, but always in a sense of trying to understand the scriptures better (not strategically) which includes an emphasis on what the scriptures do say (rather than just what they don’t). More of this, please. And I’d especially like to see more Latter-day Saint scholars add to the cultural insights of folks like Walton the unique tenets of the Restored Gospel (such as pre-mortal existence) alongside to arrive at a rigorous and distinctive Latter-day Saint perspective.

And what is required from lay people like myself is a willingness to do the hard work of sifting scripture from culture. This means, you know, doing our best to actually read what some of these scholars produce. Of course, we all have different degrees of ability and opportunity to do this, but the underlying and motivating attitude behind the pursuit is one that is accessible to all, and it is one of epistemic humility. Be willing to reconsider your interpretations and always be on the lookout for a chance to rediscover teachings and stories in the scripture that are better than what you thought you already knew.

Also, to the extent possible, everybody should probably try to avoid the contentious debates where these good-faith efforts are lacking. For these efforts to amount to something of lasting good for God’s Kingdom, we must pursue and invite His Spirit, and that means that sometimes it’s better to avoid controversies than try to win them.

The post The Ambiguity / Authority Tradeoff in Scripture appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

For about the last month, those who have been following The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Come, Follow Me study schedule have spent time with the families of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As is rightly highlighted in the lesson materials, these stories are, at their core, stories of covenant. When viewed collectively, the accounts of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Leah, Bilhah, Rachel, and Zilpah are an uninterrupted narrative about God and God’s willingness to reach down directly into the lives of the great patriarchs and matriarchs of the Judeo-Christian faith tradition. Through these Divine interactions, God forges covenant relationships with people, one-by-one, as part of God’s intention to bless (i.e. to make holy) all of creation.  Far from the image of the legalistic and jealous God that Marcion saw in the Old Testament, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is patient, interactive, engaged, and deeply committed over multiple generations.  This is a God that is willing to meet these humans where they are and gently lead them into newness.

And it’s a good thing God is generous because the family dynamics that we encounter in these stories are (to say it gently) complicated. Consistent with the “warts and all” approach that is characteristic of the Hebrew Bible, the families of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are portrayed as far from idyllic. For example:

• Abraham, at the behest of Sarah, throws Hagar (his wife) and Ishmael (his son) out of his household, presumably appreciating their risk of dying in the desert. 
• Abraham and Isaac both pretend their wives (Sarah and Rebekah, respectively) are their sisters and offer them up to be married to other powerful men (at God’s urging in one instance) and as a way to save their own lives (Genesis 12:10-20; 20:1-14; 26:1-11 cf. Abraham 2:22-25).
• There is intense conflict between Hagar and Sarah (Abraham’s wives) and between Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah (Jacob’s wives) when it comes to childbearing and the status it provides—along with painful conflict around the love of Jacob himself (Genesis 16:5-6; 21:10; 29:30-30:22).
• Rebekah and Jacob collude to trick an old and nearly-blind Isaac into giving Jacob (who was Rebekah’s favorite) the firstborn’s blessing. While they were successful in this subterfuge, Esau is so upset that he threatens to kill Jacob who flees to Haran and lives with Rachel’s family for two decades. Rebekah recognizes her actions have damaged her relationship with Esau beyond repair. 
• Reuben sleeps with Bilhah, Rachel’s servant (his “other mother” to use language from contemporary polygamous relationships), shortly after Rachel dies in childbirth.
• Joseph is sold into slavery by his siblings out of jealousy. 

Perhaps because Latter-day Saints are familiar with the covenant-specific aspects of these stories it is easy to jump over those texts that expose the challenging family situations these stories present; situations that are filled with pain, hurt, duplicity, and selfishness.  And yet, I have come to believe that these family stories are just as important as the stories of covenant.  But why, you might ask, should we spend time talking about these difficult family stories?  The answer seems as obvious as it is profound: because the stories in Genesis are not only about covenants, they are also about families.  In fact, Genesis makes clear that any discussion about covenants also requires a discussion about the families through which these covenants were transmitted.  The two are intertwined.  Importantly, the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are fully transparent in recognizing that complicated family dynamics are part of life—even for those who make and keep covenants with God.

Though many of these complicated family situations didn’t seem to be resolved in this life, God’s covenantal interactions with these families continued nevertheless.  I realize this is not the way we usually talk about the families of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but it is a perspective that is grounded in these biblical narratives and thus part of our sacred tradition.  And as we try to liken these scriptures to ourselves, we may be able to recognize some of these same (or other) complicated family dynamics in our own lives or the lives of our friends.  In fact, these stories make expressly clear—they even seem to embrace with both arms—the reality that every family has complicated forces at work.  Even families of the covenant.  Some families of the covenant have individuals whom they have effectively exiled into the desert, and others may feel like they have been exiled by their families; some families of the covenant have fractures in relationships among parents/children/siblings; some mixed marriage families of the covenant (but certainly not all) are marked by conflict between the adults, leaving children to struggle with navigating intrafamily relationships; and some families of the covenant have conflicts over inheritance with certain family members lining up against other family members.  The Genesis stories demonstrate that family relationships, even those bound by covenant, may not work out the way we might expect; this reality, Genesis seems to suggest, is part of life.  

As odd as it may sound, I find deep reserves of hope nestled in the Genesis narratives when it comes to families.  I find it comforting that the great patriarchs and matriarchs of our faith—those whose covenants serve as the foundational elements of our understanding of God’s relationship with humankind and the world—had less-than-perfect families which contained—alongside joy and happiness—moments of conflict, challenge, and discord.  They were imperfect, but this did not stop God from interacting with these families!  In fact, a central message of these texts seems to be that families of the covenant should expect to have challenges, but that does not mean that God is not with them.  Rather, God persists with these families anyway.  God embraces our families as they are—God does not demand (or even expect, it seems) perfect families—and God offers to walk with us as we struggle through complicated relationships.  In a culture where anything less than ideal is seen as a failure, the families of Genesis offer us a space for self-acceptance and self-compassion.

The post Imperfect Families and Covenantal Relationships appeared first on Public Square Magazine.