Appreciating the BOM [Bryan]

I have a strange relationship with the Book of Mormon (BOM). It has been one of the most important books in my life, a book I consider to be a sacred text. And yet, I have sometimes felt uncomfortable, even a little ashamed, of some aspects of it. It really is a strange book, sometimes awkwardly written, full of seemingly simplistic didactic moral tales ("be good and God will protect and reward you"). Its picture of human life, where angels constantly visit people and where the good prosper while the wicked are justly punished, often doesn't square with life as I experience it.

Enter Grant Hardy's new book, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide (Oxford University Press, 2010). This book has given me a renewed appreciate for the literary qualities of the BOM. Hardy's idea is that we should focus more on the three major internal editors: Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni. If we do this, the literary complexity of the book emerges. What has impressed me most about Hardy's work is that it has allowed the BOM to better speak to life as I understand it.

Consider the following example. The major editor of the book, Mormon, presents himself as a historian who uses history to teach moral and religious lessons. Now, in my experience, it is often very difficult to draw lessons from the past. There are always holes in the stories we want to tell, exceptions to the lessons we want to draw. Often, history shows that the distinction between "good guys" and "bad guys" gets blurry and that human success is always intermingled and often inseparable from human failure.

Mormon, for his part, wants to teach us a lesson that wicked people meet a bad end. To make this point, however, Hardy shows how Mormon has to edit out certain events that don't seem to fit his moral story. Take one example, of many. The people of Ammonihah are portrayed as some of the greatest villains of the BOM -- their biggest crime is burning innocent women and children in a orgy of religious bigotry. This evil people eventually meet their just end as their city is conquered and annihilated by a Lamanite army. This all supports Mormon's thesis: bad guys meet a bad end. The problem is, though, that other people were conquered by the Lamanite army at that time, as well, as Mormon briefly notes. "Some around the borders of Noah," he notes, were also killed (see Alma 16:3) What about these people? Did they deserve it, too? Later, we hear only that they were strategically "weak." Nothing is said about this city being particularly wicked. If they were wicked, presumably Mormon would have told us since this data could have been used to support his point. The reality, it seems, was a bit more messy than his simple lesson would admit. Hardy shows us many examples like this of how there exists a complex reality behind the lessons the BOM editors want to teach. They are trying to construct a comprehensible story in the face of a complex reality that sometimes escapes their finite human understanding. As Paul says, we all see through a glass, darkly.

This realization about the BOM editors made me feel a closer connection to the book and its very human (and now more true-to-real-life) characters. The world that exists behind the scenes of the BOM matches more closely the murky world as I experience it. The editorial lessons are helpful, inspired, and true, but these glimpses of the underlying complexity open the door for continued searching, continued meditation, continued grasping for greater light and knowledge. In this sense, the Book of Mormon invites us to enter a world, not only of eternal truths, but also of continued questions; a world not only of inspired words, but also of a need for personal inspiration; a world not only full of simple moral tales, but also full of the tragic richness of human life.