How to Read the Book of Mormon–A Fragment

 I watch a TikTok account called @readingbom which features a born-again Christian reading the Book of Mormon for the first time. He has my rapt attention. 

Never before have I had a stronger desire to share a copy of the Book of Mormon with someone–not because I feel a burning in my bosom, or even that I feel great swells of faith and an urgent need to share my beliefs with others. But  I want my very own @readingbom who sends his summaries, questions, and concerns with the text in real time as he earnestly studies the book that is central to my religion. 

I find it so fascinating to hear what an intelligent person thinks as they read a book that is so second-nature to me and with which I continue to wrestle. 

But while I listen to this guy’s comments and questions on TikTok, I find myself with thoughts about his methods: The frameworks he uses to approach the text, the assumptions he makes, the way he interprets certain verses. 

But before I talk about that, I want to talk about his comment section. It is full of very enthusiastic members of the church who are cheering him on. When he is confused about a passage, he has several explanations. When he has questions, he has answers. And mostly, he has recommendations on what to read or watch or do  in addition to the Book of Mormon. “Just wait till you get to the D&C. That’s where the doctrine really shines through,” a commenter says when the guy expresses difficulty understanding what implications there are for Nephi’s words theologically. 

“For me,” says another, “the gospel really came together in the Pearl of Great Price.” 

A couple weeks ago there was a powerful chorus: “YOU SHOULD WATCH GENERAL CONFERENCE,” they said, and he did watch about half a session, and he made a few videos about his thoughts. 

But it’s getting overwhelming for him. He’s recently cut back on his video making to focus on getting through the Latter-day Saint canon. And I think that’s super respectful and genuine of him. But I don’t think it will result in a good understanding of the church. 

Nowhere in Latter-day scripture are key elements of our theology spelled out clearly and concisely. Reading the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants will give you most-if-not-all of the elements of say, the plan of salvation, but it won’t put the puzzle together for you. And even if you did it yourself–putting together the plan of salvation from various scriptures–without guidance, you’re not going to be able to sort through the apparent contradictions in many pre-post-earth-life-related scriptures. 

Another consistent chorus in @readingbom’s comments is “please meet with the missionaries. They can answer your questions.” And while I think that missionary quality is hit-or-miss, I do think this is probably the right approach if you want to understand what Mormonism is about in its most consistent, organized form. A missionary in most cases is someone who has had the living gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embedded in herself or himself, and if you get a good one, you get a living person who can understand your questions and respond to them in ways the text of a book cannot. And the benefit of meeting with missionaries over, say, a Latter-day Saint friend is that the missionary has been trained to focus on some key, consistent parts of the the church’s theology without straying into her or his own “gospel according to me” ways of dealing with the complexity of all the stuff we read in the church. 

But what about people who for whatever reason don’t want to meet with missionaries? What could they read to best understand the theology of the church? I’ll offer an attempt at a syllabus of sorts at the end of this post, but I’d be curious what you think. 

On the other hand, I’m starting to lose my concept of a unified, consistent, Latter-day Saint Theology anyway. There’s so much variety in how church members understand even the most fundamental points of doctrine, which is weird to say for me because for so long I thought that one of the key benefits of my religion over others is that it is so unified. I used to tell people as a missionary that you can go to any congregation in the church and hear the same gospel, but I know by experience that that isn’t the case. And for the record, I find that a feature, not a bug of the restored gospel. 

How to read the Book of Mormon

I think @readingbom is going about his investigation of the Latter-day Saints very thoughtfully, respectfully, and earnestly. But the more I listen, the more I think he’s approaching the Book of Mormon in the wrong way. This isn’t his fault of course. We can only approach a text with our own perspectives and biases in mind. And this isn’t meant as a criticism of the guy himself (if I did have direct feedback for him, I’d hope I could find a way to reach him directly). But I guess I mean this as a way to introduce how I think people should approach the Book of Mormon if they can help it. 

@Readingbom’s videos generally start with him pointing out verses of Book of Mormon scriptures that stand out to him in his studies. He then describes what he thinks they mean. Then he sometimes asks questions. And then he usually points out verses of scripture from the Bible that seem to align with the Book of Mormon or seem to contradict it. He’s said that he considers the Bible authoritative and has given his reasons for such a belief, and he seems to assume univocality. So most of his Bible comments seem like he’s saying, “If this is what the Book of Mormon is saying, that’s not what I believe because the Bible says this.” Or maybe that he’s using the Bible as a measuring stick to evaluate the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. Like where the Book of Mormon matches the Bible, it’s true, but where it contradicts, it’s false. 

And in some ways the church sets people up for that approach. We say that the Book of Mormon is “comparable to the Bible.” We affirm the truth of the Bible and do a lot to seem like other christians. The subtitle of the Book of Mormon is “Another Testament of Jesus Christ” which makes it sound like it’s just another witness of the same stuff as the Bible. 

But I think it’s more productive to assume that the Book of Mormon that you’re reading will add to and change the Bible. Yes it’s another testament of Jesus Christ, like the Old and New Testaments, but it’s a different testament. Just repeating the truths of the Bible as if the same stuff was taught in the Americas would validate the idea that God manifests himself to all nations, but it wouldn’t be very valuable beyond that. But what the Book of Mormon does–and what earnest readers should expect it to do–is recontextualize Biblical truths and then add new ones. Reading the Bible, it’s clear that the patriarchs and prophets didn’t know anything about Jesus directly, and that the Holy Spirit wasn’t actively given until the day of Pentecost. But the Book of Mormon claims otherwise. A reader of the Book of Mormon could reasonably take this as evidence that the book is untrue or at least anti-biblical, but more insightful is to investigate what that would mean theologically. 

In a broader sense, that Christians are less comfortable accepting, the same approach is necessary when studying the Bible too. Each Biblical author had her or his own ideas about God, and their writing reflects unique theology. Biblical authors correct each other. They rewrite stories from other sources. They contradict and disagree on important details, and you will always devalue or misinterpret scripture if you assume that it’s univocal and you make all the contradictions fit together. I try not to take too much pleasure in it, but I like when @readingbom identifies a verse in the Book of Mormon that contradicts the BIble, and then it turns out that that Book of Mormon verse is in the Bible. It just goes to illustrate how many contradictions there are in scripture, and we should be looking for what contradicting authors are trying to add theologically to the canon. 

I’m still playing with the idea, but here’s my reading list for self-investigation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 

1. Our Search for Happiness by M Russel Ballard 

1. This is like the book form of having missionaries teach you. It’s written for people who want to understand the church, and it focuses on the fundamental aspects of what makes up our doctrine and what makes us unique. 

2. Joseph Smith History 1

3. Selections from the Book of Mormon

1. Introduction

2. 1 Nephi

3. 2 Nephi 31-33

4. 3 Nephi 7-27

5. Moroni 10

4. The Living Christ

5. The Family: A Proclamation to the World

6. Okay, this isn’t reading, but attend a church service or two. So much of a religion is in its practices, not its sacred texts. 

I would be quite curious what other people’s lists would look like if you made them.