Why I Believe: Evidence Fifty-Five: The Book of Mormon and the Psychological Impact of Gross Immorality Upon Individuals and Society”©

101 Reasons Why I Believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet.

Evidence Fifty-Five:

The Book of Mormon and the Psychological Impact of 

Gross Immorality Upon Individuals and Society” 

Living in a sex-saturated society, I have often contemplated the wisdom of a passage in the Book of Mormon. The prophet Jacob, Nephi’s younger brother, in an attempt to magnify his office (Jac. 2:2), calls the people together to speak to them. Jacob is grieved, he tells them, because they “are beginning to labor in sin”(2:5), even a “very abominable” sin. He is further grieved because of “the wickedness of their hearts.”(2:6.) He knows his people have come to hear “the word which healeth the wounded soul”(2:8), but he is under “strict command” to speak of their wickedness.(2:10).  He begins with a discussion of the sins of pride, thinking they are better than others, and their serious misuse of their prosperity and wealth, which should be used with the “intent to do good–to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and afflicted.”(2:19)

But he has yet more on his mind– “grosser crimes” as he calls them.(2:22-23) They have justified and excused themselves of their “whoredoms”–including taking additional wives or concubines, by perverting scriptures written about David and Solomon. He went on to accuse them of being more wicked than the Lamanites, who kept the commandments concerning these things  given them by their father Lehi.(2:34) Then he utters this remarkable passage, of which there is no equal in the Bible:

Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you.  And because of the strictness of the word of God, which cometh down against you, many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds. (Jac. 2:35)

This passage strikes me as not only extremely important for our day; it also raises an interesting question about the author of the passage, especially the last phrase, “many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.” It is common among Joseph’s critics to accuse him of possessing excessive sexual libido and a deficient character which led him into gross immorality. If he was so possessed, I ask where the sensitivity expressed in this passage came from? They would say it came from his own hypocritical heart. Having devoted myself for several years to produce an early study of his plural marriages, I do not believe it for a moment. Moreover, I have to ask, “What events may have transpired in his family life or near environment before he was the age of twenty-five, when this book was published, which may have so sensitized him? This, of course, is asked, from the critic’s view that Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon. But, I don’t believe that for a moment either. Nevertheless, I am not aware of any serious infidelity within Joseph’s immediate family which would have produced the understanding and deep feeling expressed in Jacob’s statement, and as far as I know we have no indication from him that any like event in his immediate society effected him deeply.

When one considers Jacob’s words without preconceptions and prejudice, the depth and poignancy of the psychological insight is staggering. Was Joseph Smith in and of himself, at age twenty-five, in possession of such wisdom?  I wonder, and as much as I respect him, I doubt. Here is what Neal A. Maxwell has written about the Jacob pericope:

Clearly there are psychological scars left in the wake of unchastity, however sophisticated the indulgent society may believe itself to be. Unchastity can cause a kind of inner death, resulting in bitterness, emptiness, or in equally disabling and profound passivity. Children also pay a price: witness what might be called the Sayonara syndrome—the resentment of thousands of young Japanese men and women now coming of age who were fathered by American serviceman and were abandoned, cruelly stranded between two cultures. At least the Lieutenant Pinkerton in Puccini's Madame Butterfly had to face the consequence of his abandonment of Cho-Cho San.(1)

I am sure much, much more could be said about the negative psychological as well as social and cultural impact gross immorality produces on the individual, family, and society. Personally, when I consider this brief but wonderfully profound episodic teaching, I stand in awe that the Book of Mormon which is literally filled with such gems, was produced by a relatively unlettered farm boy in back woods New York in 1830. To me it speaks of the greatness of the book and the divine inspiration which rested upon the boy-man who translated it by the gift and power of God. It is one more small evidence which encourages me to believe he was a prophet of God.

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:

1.  Neal A. Maxwell, A Time to Choose, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1975, 60.