Some of the most memorable scenes in the 2001 biographical film A Beautiful Mind were the portrayals by Russell Crowe of mathematician John Nash, spinning himself into a frenzy while attempting to decode secret Soviet messages. Nash’s conspiracy board, a wall filled with newspaper articles, photographs, magazine cutouts, and yarn connecting all the dots in an ominous spider web, highlighted the depths of insanity to which his mental illness had sunken him. The “crazy wall” is a cinematic trope common in thrillers and detective shows. The idea is that there are “connections” and “hidden information” in the evidence that the average person would not be able to see by examining it in a straightforward manner. The danger of the crazy wall is obvious–the wild spider web of connections can become a mental house of cards leading to false conclusions.
On my mission in South America, I read the Book of Mormon daily. Among my study habits was the practice of cutting out quotations from General Authorities and gluing them into the page gutter to add “modern-day” context. I also highlighted verses with colored pencils and would draw lines connecting different verses on the page.
At one point after I had resigned from the church, I ran across my copy of the Book of Mormon among some keepsakes that I had tucked away in a storage bin. I opened the pages, and it struck me that my scriptures appeared to be the product of a fanatic trying to find meaning in what would otherwise be meaningless drivel. Mark Twain famously said that the Book of Mormon was the equivalent of “chloroform in print,” but my thought was that my scriptures were marked up as if I was on something much stronger, like LSD. It was a crazy wall, and I was like John Nash, creating groundless connections in my mind. The spider webs of yarn were instead drawn in ink, but the principle was almost the same. No, I didn’t suffer from schizophrenia, but it was clear to me that I had been “seeing things” that were not there.
The “Crazy Wall” in my old copy of the Book of Mormon
Frameworks of Pseudo-doctrine
Since the church is a outgrowth of Joseph Smith’s imagination, doctrinal consistency and historical accuracy are an impossibility. But that hasn’t stopped the General Authorities and the Church Education System from promoting ideas designed to buttress the testimonies of church members that are vulnerable to the danger of using their brains. The Mormon apologists at Brigham Young University, for example, have been either directly funded by the church or else supported by wealthy members of the church acting on the behest of the brethren. In the early to mid 20th century, members of the First Presidency or the Quorum of the Twelve would publish books expounding doctrines that were not found in the standard works. Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie and Doctrines of Salvation by Joseph Fielding Smith are notorious examples, giving rise to such kooky beliefs as resurrected beings lacking genitalia and God having sexual intercourse with the virgin Mary. In keeping with the church’s emphasis on correlation, such teachings have been disavowed.
Nevertheless, less kooky but still unofficial beliefs have always found their way into the Mormon consciousness. These are injected into the minds of Mormons by eccentric gospel doctrine teachers, institute and seminary teachers, BYU courses, publications by Deseret Book, journal articles in Dialogue, foundations specializing in Mormon apologetics, visiting scholars giving stake firesides, off-the-cuff remarks by General Authorities in informal settings, and other means. This “framework of pseudo-doctrine” helps to illuminate difficult questions while providing cover to the church. While the Church’s correlation program scrubs official church publications of the more controversial teachings, the pseudo-doctrine framework helps support people’s faith against attacks.
Take the Book of Abraham, for example. Ever since a group of papyrus fragments were rediscovered among the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the church has had to defend Joseph Smith’s obviously-fraudulent “translations.” The leading theory that allows Mormons to maintain their faith is that Joseph’s translations were inspired by the ancient documents but not literally translated from them. This is sometimes called the “catalyst theory.” The catalyst theory persists despite the scriptural claim, written in the book itself, that the book was written by Abraham himself upon the papyrus. It also persists despite direct references to the facsimiles in the Abrahamic text. The church admits publicly that the “the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham,” but it qualifies that admission by making the false statement that “there is not unanimity, even among non-Mormon scholars, about the proper interpretation of the vignettes on these fragments.” By leaving the issue ambiguous, church members are free to fill in the blanks in whatever way they see fit to keep the faith.
As I began to question my faith, I often fantasized that the prophet would come out and make some unequivocal statements that would help me restore my faith. That never happened, of course. When speaking in their official capacity, the General Authorities avoid controversial statements. Defending the church by relying on scholarship poses problems when the scholarship is refuted. The prophets therefore speak in banal generalities, and urge members to rely on the Spirit to discern truth. We must doubt our doubts before we doubt our faith, and that means accepting inconsistencies and falsehoods. Place your doubts on a shelf. Nevermind that the shelf is getting too heavy.
Pseudo-doctrine is the only way that some people in the church survive. But the cognitive dissonance eventually catches up. Many of us leave the church before our minds get irreconcilably cluttered with the webs of yarn. For others, those webs become cobwebs.
