Mormon: A Brief Theological Introduction (The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions, #10)

by Adam S. Miller

Mormon’s life is a case study in apocalyptic discipleship. What does a disciple’s task of sacrificing all things look like in a world where all things are already passing away?

Moreover, while experts in the modern disciplines of philosophy, theology, literature, and history, series authors and editors also work explicitly within the context of personal and institutional commitments both to Christian discipleship and to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I’m betting on the following thesis: that living through the end of the world (on any number of scales) is the fundamental framework for Christian discipleship of any kind—by anyone, in any world, in any age.

There is a deep connection between Mormon’s mood and his mindfulness. His sobriety is paired with his calling to witness. His melancholy bearing is paired with his intensity of perception. These two elements are so tightly intertwined that, for Mormon, the work of Christian discipleship necessarily unfolds as the work of witnessing. In this way, Mormon models discipleship. To be a disciple of Christ is to live, like Mormon, as a witness.

Alternately, what would it look like to hide up treasure unto the Lord? It would look like abandoning the fantasy that these treasures were yours to keep in the first place. It would look like sacrificing your claim to all things. It would look like witnessing the end of the world. It would look like discipleship.

Success and wealth are not inherently meaningful. Though goodness may tend toward prosperity, material prosperity isn’t necessarily a bellwether of divine favor. All treasures are slippery and they cannot insulate us from the loss of all things. And deployed as an idolatrous defense against such loss, success and wealth are less than useless. They can only hasten our ruin.

Mormon uses these subtractive formulas to describe what it’s like to continue loving and sacrificing even as the world ends. He uses them to describe what it looks like when, practicing an apocalyptic brand of disciple-ship, the apocalypse itself comes into view. He uses them to describe what it’s like to continue to act when all of your actions are vain.

Mormon exemplifies what it means to be a disciple of Christ by demonstrating how to sacrifice all things: he recenters his actions on the actions themselves and he willingly sacrifices his investment in the hoped for outcomes. Or, to put this more starkly: Mormon, living through the end of the world, learns how to love without, in the process, hoping that his love will prevent the world from ending. He learns to sacrifice by sacrificing any hope for gain. Sacrificing his hope that loving the Nephites would save them, he continues to love them anyway.

The pure love of Christ—a love purified of “hope” for gain and success—cannot fail because the work of love is its own justification. The work of love, regardless of what outcomes it generates, is always worth doing for its own sake.

Disciples, on the contrary, practice forgiveness as a bearing. They practice forgiveness as a sober and attentive existential mood, as a posture, as a manner of life, as a way of moving through this world and steering into its re/creation.

Living as someone who curses this world and condemns its imperfections as faults rather than as occasions for healing and creation—this is itself a curse. Such is the life of the damned.

A hallmark of vengeance is its predictable move to hijack the forms of religion and justice, only to empty these forms and repurpose them to their own retaliatory ends. Vengeance predictably and profanely “swears before the heavens” because the project of revenge is itself a way of playing God. Vengeance is a potent form of idolatry.

The sword of vengeance hangs over those who insist on drawing that sword.

Enmeshed in this world’s continual re/creation, there is only one path forward. We must give up on revenge. We must stop cursing and despising. We must stop playing God. We must sacrifice all things by forgiving all things. We must “lay down [our] weapons of war, and delight no more in the shedding of blood” (Mormon 7:4).

Like a parasite, sin will attach itself to the host of a true religion and slowly but steadily repurpose that tradition’s scriptures, rituals, and communities to its own bitter ends.

Idolaters, understanding religion as the business of getting gain, repurpose the forms of sacrifice for the sake of entering into a quid pro quo with their idolatrous gods. Each time they are rewarded with success, each time they gain from their idols the treasure they desire, they offer sacrifices in return.

In the hands of the damned, the point of God’s law is not love and sacrifice. The point of God’s law is to curse and condemn. The point of the law is revenge. Or, perhaps most succinctly, the point of the law is to make sure that people finally get what they deserve.

As a result, justice is poorly defined as the backward-looking business of making sure that people get what they “deserve.” Justice isn’t a form of religiously sanctioned vengeance. It isn’t a form of revenge dressed up as a divinely endorsed system of prizes and punishments that carves the world up into winners and losers. Certainly, this way of thinking about justice comes naturally to us—we want gain and we want revenge. And certainly, forbidden to exercise vengeance on our own behalf, we naturally gravitate toward the fantasy that, ultimately, an all-powerful God will inflict an all-powerful vengeance for us.

In order to no “longer deny the Christ,” Moroni writes, we must learn how to “behold the Lamb of God” (Mormon 9:3). We must stop covering our eyes and hiding our heads in the sand, repeating the mantra that “all is well in Zion” (2 Nephi 28:21). We must stop pretending that there is any other way to pass through the crucible of this world’s continual re/creation than by following the sacrificial example of “the Lamb.”

sake getting gain

Justice, in the hands of God, fulfills the law only by answering the question: what is needed? The law is fulfilled by asking: what, on this occasion, is needed to re/create the world as a just world? If hard consequences are needed to express love and fulfill the law, then love enforces hard consequences—but as a form of grace, not as an act of revenge. And if, instead, mercy and tenderness are needed to express love and fulfill the law, then mercy and grace are given. In either case, the law is fulfilled and it is fulfilled by love.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan doesn’t ask what the injured man deserves. He only asks what the injured man needs.

In the hands of the master, the law is not used to make sure that people get only what they deserve. In the hands of the master, the law is fulfilled, instead, by determining what each laborer needs.

The law is of enormous value to those who stop trying to leverage their obedience as collateral against the loss of all things and, instead, enter through the strait gate of sacrifice.