The Book of Mormon, Part 1
As I’ve said elsewhere, I had little desire to read the Book of Mormon when Neil first began asking me to do it. There’s a lot of reasons for this:
- I did not grow up reading the King James Bible like most LDS kids do, I had never used anything more formal than an NIV or NLT. The archaic language of the Book of Mormon made for a stiff read.
- I had never even read the entire Bible. Why should I read the Book of Mormon before I had finished reading my own scriptures?
- I had heard that the Book of Mormon does not contain very much that is unique to Mormonism. Since my goal was to study what the LDS church believes, logically, it did not make much sense to spend so much time studying a book that taught so little of what makes the LDS church what it is.
- Early on in my investigation of Mormonism, I learned that there were dozens of LDS splinter groups, almost all of whom accepted some form of belief in the Book of Mormon. I had occasionally come into contact with members of these splinter groups on Internet discussion boards. Even if God told me the Book of Mormon was true, how was I to know which Mormon church I should join?
I still think the final two points are perfectly valid objections to the standard LDS missionary formula of “read the Book of Mormon, pray about it, okay now join our church.” I pointed this out to the Pratts, the missionaries and my LDS friends, but they just acted like it was a stupid question and of course belief in the Book of Mormon meant their church was true.
By the end of 1998, the badgering from my LDS friends to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it was insufferable. Every time I saw one of them they would want to know what my status was on reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it. If I asked a question about the church that they could not answer, they would snap, “Well maybe if you would read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, you would know!” I was annoyed at them for thinking that reading the Book of Mormon would somehow cure my concerns with things like Nauvoo polygamy and the Book of Abraham, and they were annoyed at me for not doing what they viewed as a simple, basic request.
I finally began reading it just to get them to leave me alone, and I certainly was not reading it with an open heart and mind. I read it just to see what was wrong with it. I took notes on all the standard critic’s objections (anachronisms, modalism, Trinitarianism, forbidding polygamy, etc.) . I tried to pray about it, but my heart wasn’t in it. It all seemed pointless.
I would read the Book of Mormon again later though.
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