Aestheism
If you’ve been following the ongoing identity crisis into which Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations tossed the LDS church some time back, you know that it’s finally true that Mormons don’t have to believe that the biblical patriarch Abraham wrote the book that Joseph Smith attributed to him.
In recent years, the LDS church has made a muted but deliberate attempt to come clean about some elements of its past and present by publishing an online series of official commentaries about such things as polygamy, murder at Mountain Meadows, the church’s century-plus of refusing to ordain black men, and the church’s ever-evolving policies concerning homosexuality.
By confronting Mormonism’s perplexities and ugliness, the LDS church’s commentaries assert a new honesty and a new openness to rethinking what constitutes the Mormonism that issues from the very conservative LDS church bureaucracy (even while the same bureaucracy is excommunicating members for pursuing the same openness—but this is a change of topic).
One recently published commentary concedes that the genuine Egyptian papyrus that Joseph Smith purchased along with a genuine mummy in the 1830’s, which he then translated in order to provide everyone with an English version of the words of Abraham that were written on the papyrus, was (probably) neither written by Abraham nor translated by Smith.
This could be one of those “Ah-hah!” moments. “See?” we can crow, “Mormonism’s been a fraud all this time, just like we said.” Indeed, there is a theme in the narratives of some who leave LDS Mormonism that cites discovering the historical fraudulence of the Book of Abraham as a decisive factor in their decisions to abandon the faith of their fathers. And mothers.
There are a lot of good reasons for people to toss their hands in the air over the LDS church and say, “That’s it, I’m done.” I have my own list of reasons to abandon the unsinkable ship that seems, nevertheless, to be listing badly to starboard. But the anxiety over the Book of Abraham not being a translation of an ancient text hasn’t really resonated with me.
Alright, the claim that the Book of Abraham is a translation of a document dating back to Abraham is nonsense. But since when did religion make sense? Was there ever any religion that made sense? Okay, the Unitarians, but there may be good reason to call Unitarianism an anti-religion, rather than a religion. Where do people whose commitment to a religion fails go, after all? Down the street to the Unitarians, to escape all that religion nonsense.
In ten thousand years of human religion, no instance has ever made any sense, whatsoever. Talking serpents, flying elephants, global floods, walking on water, cosmic turtles: being reasonable, logical, sensible, empirical, is not what religions—Mormonism, Christianity, Hinduism, Whathaveyouism—do.
To insist that religion make sense is not just a little bit like telling soccer players to use their hands. After all, using hands on the soccer field (sorry: soccer pitch) would make so much sense. Yo, Ronaldo, just pick up the ball and run with it, you imbecile. That’s it, stop all this leaping about, pick up the ball, run down the field, knock the goalie over, fall into the net, and we’ll all shout gooooooooal. If you were using your head, you wouldn’t need me to tell you this, ya Portuguese ninny, ’cause, obviously, there aren’t nearly enough people on a soccer team to adequately defend such an enormous goal against a well-toned athlete running full-speed ahead!
But, of course, if they all start using their hands, they’ll be playing a different game.
This is religion, isn’t it? A game that we play together for all sorts of purposes that turn out to be very good and very bad and all sorts of other things in between. We play the game—that is, we enter into the arena in which the game’s rules are law—in order to engage in an activity that is apart from life. An activity that is fun in a way that our day-to-day, empirical drudgery rarely is.
Generally, we leave the game behind when we go back to the drudgery. If you become the kind of annoying superfan who won’t brook any criticism of the team and will start a bar fight with the guy wearing the other team’s colors, you have forgotten that the rules that govern the game do not have any applicability off the field (sorry: pitch).
The game’s rules, which define it and distinguish it from other games and other collective activities, aren’t rationally functional. Quite the contrary, game rules are explicitly irrational.
“Why can’t I use my hands?” a soccer newbie might ask. “Because,” is the answer, “that’s the game.”
“Why do I have to keep bouncing the ball?” a basketball novice might ask. “Because,” is the answer, “that’s the game.”
“Why do I have to be baptized?” a Christian neophyte might ask. “Because,” is the answer, “that’s the game.”
“This is a revelation?” a Mormon newbie, or even oldie, might ask. “Yes,” is the answer, “that’s the game.”
The rules of a game govern activity within the game, within a defined space, within a defined time, and the rules by which the game proceeds are very often wholly arbitrary, developed to make the game more challenging, more appealing, and more satisfying to the players and fans.
The arbitrariness of the rules is also why the rules of games can change so easily. You can’t suspend gravity in order to make home runs easier. Gravity isn’t arbitrary. But you can move the fence in. College basketball didn’t use to have a shot clock. That game is much more exciting now. And the NFL is changing rules right and left to try to prevent the kinds of serious brain injuries that result from the very nonsensical activity in which two adults knock their heads together as hard as they can.
Not too long ago, the Roman Catholic church decided limbo doesn’t exist. The rule that unbaptized babies have to go to a nothingness place lost its charm, so they changed the rules, and improved the game. The United Methodist Church saw that the game was slipping a bit and changed the arbitrary rule against ordaining women in 1956. And that game improved.
Some rules develop to protect people who play. Apparently, there’s a soccer rule against biting. Religions generally have rules against bringing harm to another player, too. Not all rules are enforced as they should be. (And, as NBA history has shown, the referees themselves might be corrupt.)
Some rule changes might end some games, altogether. The hands thing would surely kill soccer. If the NFL does away with all violent contact, American football will probably die. Baseball is done for if they take away the bat.
But some new games would, no doubt, emerge. Before 1905 there was no forward pass in American football. No “Down and Out”, no “Flea Flicker”, no “Hail Mary”. At all. You could say that an entirely new game came from that rule change. A funner game. (I know, I know: “more fun”.)
So, the Book of Abraham is not a miraculous translation of an ancient document. This rule change does not do away either with the book’s fun nor Mormonism’s. Some of the grooviest parts of Mormonism—polytheism, pre-existence, god’s material contingency—either come from or are affirmed by the Book of Abraham. Even Kolob, Mormonism’s great, goofy cosmic raspberry, jumps out of the Book of Abraham.
The LDS church has changed the rule that once demanded that Mormons believe that Abraham wrote the Book of Abraham. Maybe this concession confirms that the LDS church has only been pretending to be a religion, all this time. But if you like playing Mormonism, this rule change doesn’t end anything. Rather, it seems that the game just got more interesting.
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