REVIEW - Re-reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World's Greatest Poem

 

Re-reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World's Greatest Poem

Michael Austin

Greg Kofford Books, 2014

Amazon Purchase Link

What matters more – understanding why people suffer, or knowing how we should respond when people are suffering?

I have always been fascinated by the Book of Job.  It’s a messy book, and a subversive book. The biggest take-away I’d always gotten from it was that I had the ability to use Job’s comforters as an illustration and example of how not to comfort who is suffering (IE, with theological platitudes that tend to serve more to comfort the worldview of the comforter than the person actually the suffering.)

A few weeks ago, a horrible car accident took the life of one the young Sister Missionaries serving in our ward, and sent the other into the hospital with severe head trauma. As I’m writing my thoughts now, we’re in the wake of the horrible Charleston murders. Suffering and tragedy are very much on my mind.

It was in the midst of all this that I sat down to read Michael Austin’s beautiful exploration of the Book of Job, Re-reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem.

If you’re looking for a book to lay out for you in simple language the One True Meaning of the Book of Job, all the while unlocking for all time the Divinely Appointed Reason Bad Things Happen To Good People, you might come away disappointed – but only if you’re unwilling to budge on the idea of there being One True Divine Reason.

What Austin does, in my opinion, is even better – much like David Bokovoy did in the previous volume in Kofford’s Studies in Scripture Series (the excellent Authoring The Old Testament: Genesis – Deuteronomy), Austin guides the reader on a stunning scriptural study that introduces and approaches paradigm-shifting possibilities concerning key aspects of the very nature of scripture, revelation, and literature in a relatable way that, far from leaving a newly disoriented traditional believer in the dust, also offers sincere, practical, and faithful responses and reflections.

And by ‘responses’, I don’t mean he presents ways we can ignore what we just learned, or make it comfortably fit with old ways of thinking, or make it, well, comfortable. I mean that Austin illustrated ways to practically apply Job in ways that expand our own religious perspectives and behaviors.

Austin shows us how, by willing to approach the text in ways that may initially make us uncomfortable, we can find new profound questions and insights that make the text far more relevant and useful to us and our lived religion (and those we claim to serve with our religion) than a cursory or traditional reading of the text might present. It may make the reader come away more useful to the suffering.

So what is the meaning of the Book of Job?

“The Book of Job is a difficult text,” writes Austin. “Its multiple voices each present us with a piece of the truth.  But they never quite go together into a single, unified message.”

This insight alone – which is easily applicable to the entirety of the scriptural canon – can help the reader to see a consistent flaw in a traditional approach to scripture: the assumption that The Good Guys Are Correct About Everything They Affirm, And The Bad Guys Are Always Wrong, And This Being So Is The Only Way Scripture Would Have Any Value.

Austin shows how he has approached this in regards to his exploration of Job:  “Astute readers will have already noticed that my own interpretations of Job in this book are not all compatible with each other [. . . ] Sometimes, I am on Job’s side and sometimes I am on God’s side – and, in a few places, I have good things to say about both the Comforters and the Devil.  Even if I wanted to be completely consistent about these things, I could not, for Job is a poem about (among so many other things) the impossibility of finding the truth in a single perspective.”

This is a powerful, potentially paradigm-shifting insight in and of itself if one is not accustomed to approaching and studying scripture with this perspective. Scriptures aren’t books of answers – they are prompts to get us asking the right questions that will lead to inspiration, revelation, and repentance. But this broad idea is only one of many key insights offered by the book.

Going back to the first question I posed, Austin’s book not only proposes, but calls for actual compassion for our fellow humans, and not to let our perceptions of The Doctrines of Orthodox Religion get in the way of our foundational covenant commitment of  “mourning with those who mourn, and comforting those who stand in need of comfort”.

As Austin points out, “The more that Job presses his claim to human compassion, the more abstract [his ‘comforters’] arguments become until, in the end, Job ceases to be a human being who needs comfort and becomes simply a theological problem that needs a solution.”

“God can take care of Himself,”
Austin later asserts, “our responsibility is to take care of each other.”

Austin’s words and explorations of this book hope to shatter a usually uncontested belief that God would rather us take the time to defend Him in the place of serving and loving His children.  This book is filled with powerful, life-saving insights such as these, resulting from a deep and thoughtful encounter with the Book of Job, that should be pinned on every church bulletin board or placard in the land.

This continues on into one of the most potentially life-changing insights in the book: “To meet our obligations to our fellow human beings, we need not believe that God is lacking in either power or goodness.  We just need to understand that He does not require our assistance in dealing with challenges to His authority.  We do not have to protect God from criticisms, complaints, and petitions.  He is not some first-time godling out on a test drive.  He can take criticism.  He can handle complaints.  And He has no need tor when human beings ask Him to do things differently.  Too many people – often from positions of ecclesiastical authority – spend their time trying to make sure that God’s feelings do not get hurt.  This is how we become the Comforters when we should be listening – really listening with out hearts – to the suffering Job.”

There’s a lot more to Austin’s book that I’ve brought up here – as if these selections alone shouldn’t send you scrambling to get your own copy. It’s not big in page count, but it’s packed in wide-ranging thoughtful content.

As a bonus, Austin’s prose is so delightful that you are conflicted between wanting to fly through the pages as quick as you can to soak up the goodness of everything at once – and wanting to stop and ponder after each paragraph to let the ramifications of the proposed thoughts and presented facts sink in.

This book is educational, entertaining, uncomfortable, and inspiring. A quadruple threat if ever I’ve seen one. Pick it up today! Highly recommended.

REVIEW - Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis - Deuteronomy

 

Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis - Deuteronomy

David Bokovoy

Greg Kofford Books, 2014

Amazon Purchase Link

Can a faithful Latter-day Saint accept the possibility that what are commonly called the Books of Moses were not actually written by Moses? Why would we want to? Would this necessarily undermine scriptural authority, and go against what is seen as clear modern revelation?

These are important and relevant questions for Mormons! And now, for the first time, they are properly addressed in a faithful, and easy to understand manner.

In this book, Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis – Deuteronomy, the first of a Trilogy exploring the authorship of the Old Testament canon in general (and also the first in an exciting new series of ‘Contemporary Studies in Scripture’ by Kofford Books) David Bokovoy ( a PhD in Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East with an MA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University) presents what I can unconditionally note is one of the most important books ever written for study and appreciation of the Old Testament for a faithful LDS Perspective.

Many LDS members, if they have been exposed to bits and pieces of secular biblical scholarship, including Higher Criticism and the Documentary Hypothesis, see such a departure from how they are used to experiencing the Old Testament that they either immediately discard the new knowledge, or allow it to create cracks in their faith.

David Bokovoy beautifully demonstrates how neither of these reactions are necessary, and that an accurate understanding of mainstream biblical scholarship, far from decreasing one’s faith, can add immeasurably to one’s appreciation of not only the formation and writings of the Old Testament, but also its relationship to scriptures of the Restoration, such as the Book of Moses and the rest of the Joseph Smith Translation, the Book of Abraham, and even the Book of Mormon itself.

You do not need to be a Biblical Scholar to appreciate or understand this book – to the contrary, it was designed for those who have no previous understanding of Biblical scholarship! It is very much an introduction. However, it can also serve a secondary purpose of helping those who are familiar with scholarship find helpful approaches and models for encountering Modern scriptural texts in that light.

This is a book that can undoubtedly change how you see the Old Testament, and will likely create a need to adjust  perspectives and paradigms. This is a good thing! It will also increase understanding and relevance of the modern scripture which has the voice of God explaining that scriptures “were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.” (D&C 1:24)

I HIGHLY recommend Authoring the Old Testament: Genesis – Deuteronomy.  I’ve found it a deeply satisfying, intellectually stimulating, and , believe it or not, a very, VERY faith promoting book. Really top notch stuff.

I repeat: this is one of the most important books on Mormon scripture to be published recently. And there’s been a lot of groundbreaking works on LDS scripture coming out of late. If it seems like I’ve been praising every book I’ve reviewed lately, and proclaiming its importance, this is only because these last few years have been a really wonderful time for thoughtful, ground-breaking works on Mormon scripture, history, and culture. This book, like much of what has been pouring out of Kofford Books, is one of those, and has the potential to radically expand understanding and appreciation for not only the Old Testament, but scripture in general. It’s really that good. Read it. Share it with your friends. Discuss it.

REVIEW - Letters To A Young Mormon

 

Letters to a Young Mormon
Adam Miller
Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2014
Amazon Purchase Link (to revised 2018 edition)

The Neal A. Maxwell Institute has just released the first volume in their ‘Living Faith’ series. Letters to a Young Mormon, by Adam Miller, is a small, pocket-sized book with barely 70 full pages of text.
I’m finding it very hard to describe this book. Mainly because I’m trying to restrain my initial impressions to shout HALLELUJAH from the housetops at its very existence.

This book, if read and distributed, has the power to do extraordinary good. If you look at the table of contents, you might think these short chapters are simply a mirror of what you might see in For The Strength of Youth:

Agency, Work, Sin, Faith, Scripture, Prayer, History, Science, Hunger, Sex, Temples, Eternal Life.

I view this book, actually, as a perfect, beautiful and rich compliment, companion, and addendum to that institutional book of standards. The chapter on ‘History’, I think, contains within it a beautiful summary of what this book is – it is noted how the real life experiences of those who grappled with understanding and living Gospel principles can generally be realistically a bit more complicated than some of the simple illustrations and stories we tend to use to address them in Church meetings, and that the struggles and complexity of those in the past is actually a form of good news for us – because we are more like them than we often make clear. Miller writes:

“Our church manuals and histories are sometimes shy about this good news. With good intentions, they worry over your faith. Sometimes they seem too much like that friend of a friend who really just wants you to like them, so they pretend to only like the same vanilla things they think you do. But God is stronger stuff than this. And the scriptures certainly are as well.”  (p 47-48).

From my own personal experience writing this, coupled with the other reviews I’ve seen around, such an acknowledgement is empowering, affirming, and incredibly faith-promoting. I know that there are many in the Church who feel this way, but without having contact with someone else saying it, they may sadly feel alone, or like their life experience is out of place what is thought to be the ideal Church experience.

What Miller does is not to criticize the Church, nor to criticize your experience. It is very strongly to affirm and illustrate the essential and vital compatibility of two. In his introduction, he notes,

“I mean only to address the real beauty and costs of trying to live a Mormon life. And I hope to show something of what it means to live in a way that refuses to abandon life or Mormonism.” (p. 7)

Sometimes, the inspired models that have been used earnestly and effectively in the past to illustrate and attempt to explain who God is and how he works to a particular audience are unintentionally turned into a conceptual constraining box, rather than a stepladder to being able to accept greater knowledge and understanding. God is bigger than the story boxes used to illuminate who he is – and Miller claims that looking around us, we can see a downpour of revealed knowledge about the world, and how God works. The problem comes when we try to shove new knowledge into old story constructs. That can lead us to feeling stuck, frustrated, and confused. New wine in old wineskins, so to say. His response is liberating:

“The question isn’t: ‘can evolution be made to fit with the biblical idea of the world?’ The question is: ‘Can evolution be made to fit with the God who showed himself in that biblical world?’ I don’t have any revelatory answers about how they fit, but given that both God and evolution are real, I assume the answer is yes. They do fit.  Now it’s up to us to open our doors, zip up our slickers, and step out into the storm of revelations raining down upon us. It’s up to us to keep thinking and praying and testing from here.” (p. 55)

Amen, Amen, Amen!

I have far more I want to say about this book. But the more I write about it, the more it’s keeping you from reading this small wonder for itself.

Buy this book. Read this book. Share it with all of your Mormon friends, young and old. Read it with them. Discuss it with them.

At this moment, I can’t think of a more faith-affirming, testimony building, intellectually and emotionally stimulating LDS devotional publication that I have previously read. This book has the potential to help many see the love and works of God at work in their lives clearer than they may have been willing – or able – to acknowledge before. This book fills a need. I extend wholehearted gratitude to the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for the publication of this important volume. I truly believe their namesake would be pleased.

REVIEW - Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

 

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

John G. Turner

Belknap Press, 2012

Amazon Purchase Link

John Turner’s Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet is an excellent book. An important book. And a deeply inconvenient book.

Brigham Young holds an interesting place in the lives of Latter-day Saints. At the same time we celebrate his leadership of the Twelve following Joseph’s death, his leading of the Exodus West, and the firm establishment of the building blocks undeniably leading to the longevity and survival of the Church, it is quite generally understood that, doctrinally, quotes by Brigham Young should often be taken ‘with a grain of salt’. That he was very opinionated, liked to speculate, and often was very confusing. Mixed with some wince-worthy quotes about race, and the role of Adam, this is generally all that most members know about Brigham Young. The larger than life epic high points make it easy to digest that he ‘said some weird things’, and then we move on.

John Turner’s biography does for Brigham Young what Richard Bushman did for Joseph Smith in his groundbreaking Rough Stone Rolling. Turner presents everything you’d heard about the Prophet, adds a lot more details you probably didn’t know, and nuances both with necessary context often removed from isolated antagonistic anecdotes or hagiographic prooftexts.

While I  completed the Joseph Smith volume with some new and surprising (to me) information, I also found stirred within myself a powerful and strong respect for Joseph as an individual. A new world  – a new paradigm – was opened up to me, and I began a roller-coaster journey of exploring the nature of scripture and revelation. The Joseph Smith Papers has greatly helped flesh this out, as has additional volumes such as Staker’s Hearken O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations, and Sam Brown’s In Heaven As It Is On Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death. These have broached very difficult questions concerning the nature of prophets, revelation, and scripture, and have been helpful friends on a journey of discovery, introspection, and a renewed – and in some ways readjusted – commitment to my Faith.

I expected the same sort of reaction while reading Turner’s Brigham Young book, but, initially, something else happened.

One of the review blurbs on the cover is this quote by Richard Bushman, which I think is a precisely accurate expression as to how I would explain this book:

“The story Turner tells in this elegantly written biography will startle and shock many readers. He reveals a Brigham Young more violent and coarse than the man Mormons have known. While lauding his achievements as pioneer, politician, and church leader, the book will require a reassessment of Brigham Young the man.”

Turner, who unlike Bushman is not LDS, is nevertheless extremely and somewhat surprisingly generous to Joseph, and to Brigham. I noted several occasions where my experience has shown that many other authors would have taken easy potshots, and illustrated less than generous conclusions. Turner is very quick to refer to other works of scholarship on more nuanced figures and persons and events rather than to make strong value judgments on his own.  (In the afterward, he thanks, among others, accomplished LDS scholars Jonathan Stapley and Sam Brown as being cultural guides of sorts. I’m familiar with their work, and their influence is very apparent in the text.)

It is Turner’s very clear generosity that makes many of the more uncomfortable and explicit aspects of Brigham Young’s life (foul language, politics, death threats, racial views, apparent apathy to murder) when presented, even more discomfiting than they may have been otherwise.

Brigham Young, by necessity, went beyond Joseph. Elements that Joseph only envisioned and began, Brigham brought to pass – Namely the in-the-open living of the concepts of Dynastic Family Chains, and a completely independent Kingdom of God in the West. Not only was Brigham a designated and authoritative spiritual guide, but he was also a temporal King in very deed. He had an earthly Kingdom he felt a duty and obligation to protect as his stewardship at all costs. In the context of frontier America, especially on the cusp of the Civil War, this was not an easy, nor a ‘clean’ job.

Turner did a fantastic job contextualizing – and to the degree possible, normalizing – the rough and tumble, harsh and bloody nature of the Antebellum West, and its related politics. Such a milieu can be extremely difficult for us 21st Century Americans to really and truly grasp. I’m still working at grasping it. It truly was a different world – and Brigham Young was not only a firm resident in this world, he was viewed as particularly radical within it.

If you’re seeking to ‘like’ Brigham more, I don’t think this book will be the best tool to accomplish that. As Bushman said, you will see a more violent, course, and angry individual than most have come to expect.

What I do think I beneficially gleamed is understanding. Understanding – it is important to stress – is very different than justification. Without feeling the need to support or condone all that Brigham did, I feel that perhaps I understand more clearly this powerful leader’s perspective, why he felt he needed to do and say the things he did, and perhaps see more clearly the goals he felt were the ends by which nearly all means were justified.

Brigham was fiercely loyal to his people, and to what he understood as his stewardship and responsibility for the survival of a literal and divinely appointed Kingdom of God. While we may find his broad ideals admirable, we can – and most, I believe, will – still find many aspects of his approaches to life’s challenges deeply troubling. And certainly not as things they could see being said and done by, for example, Thomas S. Monson.

As I neared the end of the book, what I found most fascinating was not the details of the life of Brigham himself, but what our reactions to him and his life reveal about our deeply held views of God’s personality and character. Many of the attributes we may find naturally repugnant in Brigham Young’s doings are attributes and actions that have traditionally been ascribed to God for millennia, and are found in our scriptures.

God, as presented throughout the scriptural records, was understood and presented as being willing to deceive (1 Kings 22:23), condoning extrajudicial killing and massacres (Numbers 31:17–18) , being inconsistent in his sometimes subjugating (see nearly all laws in Leviticus treating women as property)/sometimes exalting positions on women (see praise of Deborah, Esther), being discriminatory by lineage, employing fiery and harsh rhetoric (see Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel), etc. These were popular divine attributes part and parcel of admitting the Ultimate Sovereignty of God.

An encounter with an undiluted Brigham Young is a powerful reality check for our understanding and approach to the scriptural records of God.

Joseph Smith took the once-upon-a-time nature and views of Ancient Prophets and Living Scripture, and demanded that we confront them and wrestle with them as a present and practical reality. I see Brigham Young doing much of the same for traditional – and scriptural – expressions of the deeds and sayings of God. If confronted with the Old Testament’s Yahweh in our present reality, as he was literally presented in that record – in broad strokes, would we see him as a Loving Fatherly King, or a Deviant Tyrant? Would we respect him out of love, or out of the Fear of Retribution? Just as there were some who saw God through both lenses, it is fascinating that the same can be applied to Brother Brigham. The relationship between the Saints and Brigham was just as complicated as the relationship between ancient Israel and their God.

To me, Brigham fulfilled his role as revelator, not in telling us about God, but by revealing how we all truly do feel about the actual ancient, traditional, scriptural expression of God.

While Jesus was sent as a presentation and revelation of the God Who Is, I suggest that Brigham presented a contrasting revelation of the God who the religious world actually claimed to love and worship and adore. While providing extraordinary, necessary, and perhaps miraculous temporal and practical services to the Church and its members, I find the strength in the broad strokes of Brigham’s spiritual ministry to be that he created a sharp contrast which made the ministry of Jesus shine even brighter. His life, most likely unknown to him, was a living parable. In a fascinating way, Brigham’s life and theology paved the way in later years for a strong and lasting reformation of the LDS relationship with and view of the attributes of God.

We can read the Old Testament and declare, authentically and rightfully,  “God did great and wonderful things,” note some inspiring tender moments, and still be incredibly disturbed at the implications of God’s nature based on his actions, leading it to be hard to love and have Faith in God as he is presented there. While I do believe in God, I believe that a progression of light and knowledge that has come into the world has revealed the inaccuracies, misunderstandings , and misrepresentations of key aspects of His personality and attributes as understood and expressed by the ancients.

I believe that Scriptures and Prophets are inconvenient by design. I believe what we learn from our interaction and confrontation with their lives and teachings is generally far more beneficial and conducive to growth and coming to know God than the correlated sum of their words and teachings alone.

The existence and daily lives of the first pair of true Modern Prophets – Joseph and Brigham – messily and inconveniently demand that we – Mormons as well as those who are not – confront and revisit our perceptions and paradigms of the Divine.