On Restoration: A Personal Reflection

Some personal reflections on the stakes of Christian discipleship in the Restoration tradition

There are many aspects of the LDS tradition that I find incredibly moving. I love that we're called to be gatherers of the human family, restorers of the networks of relation that were inaugurated in ancient worlds and which will be endowed with glory in the worlds to come. This, it seems, was Joseph Smith's vision of temple ordinances, a vision which was transferred to Brigham Young in an 1847 dream that we probably don't talk about enough. The contemporary church is still implicated in and animated by this grand project, as evidenced by President Nelson's obvious interest in the Abrahamic Covenant ("And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed"). 

I love the LDS conception of covenant as a tool for the gradual sanctification of the human person. The language of Doctrine & Covenants 84—where we are told that the transfiguration necessary to withstand God's presence is effected via priesthood-mediated ordinances—seems to be telling us this very thing. Tangentially, it is also instructive to note that the Mosiah 18 baptismal covenant prepares us to inhabit a uniquely Mormon heaven in its emphasis on the communal obligations that attend baptism; such obligations acquire greater significance when they're paired with a conception of heaven as the sacralization of the communities we build here (see D&C 130:2). 

I love the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (which of course aren't particular to the Restoration tradition or even Christianity writ large), specifically the stories (among them the Prodigal Son, the woman taken in adultery and the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard) that point us to a God who transcends human conceptions of fairness in his goodness, mercy and willingness to engage in acts of healing love. Jesus tells us gently, humorously and insistently that the logic of the zero-sum game has no place in His Kingdom, that your own goodness relative to that of your wayward brother has nothing to do with the joy you should feel upon his return, and that God wants all of his children to participate in the celestial reunions he has prepared from the foundation of the world, regardless of when you joined the church. Regarding the story of the woman caught in adultery, I'll never forget the man I met on my mission who'd had a severe falling out with the Christianity of his youth, but who continued to be overwhelmed by the moral force of that story, and by the breathtaking grace of Jesus's stance vis-à-vis the demands of the law. Sometimes we like to complain about the secular softening of Jesus' divinity, the privileging of his ethical precepts over the foundational stories of crucifixion and Resurrection—I'm not saying that such concerns are entirely misplaced, but it seems equally important to ensure that we never lose sight of the radical beauty of the historical Jesus, "a clear-seeing poor man who redefined humans and holiness."¹

I love the pursuit of Zion, a cause that shaped and perhaps even defined the evolution of the early Church, with its successive gathering places of Kirtland, Jackson County, Nauvoo and the Intermountain West, and a cause which continues today on an international-scale. The realities of the localized gathering may make the pursuit of Zion feel less tangible, but the challenge of exporting Joseph Smith's revelations to every country and continent (read: successfully executing the localized gathering) is a task equal in epicness to that of moving peoples across oceans and prairies and creating a covenant community in a desert valley in the American West. What's more, if the logistics of Church management feel insufficiently complex for the time being, then just think about the theories of organizational behavior that will govern the eschatological gatherings to Jerusalem and Jackson County. 

I love that we have scriptural and liturgical resources that prepare us for a return to God's presence. The Anglican bishop Kenneth Kirk has noted that centuries of questionable translation of the Hebrew Bible have effectively erased from the scriptural record evidence of "the fervent hope that the ancient Jews held that they might actually come to see God"—luckily, the fountain of new revelation produced by Joseph Smith undoes this particular act of theological violence. Take, for example, the phrase "see me, and know that I am," which appears with undeniable frequency in the canonized revelations of the Doctrine and Covenants, often paired with the moving imagery of the veil being rent and us being ushered into the Father's presence. Or, consider the development of this same theme in the Book of Mormon, a record whose chief characters—Lehi, Nephi, Jacob, Alma, Mormon, Moroni, the brother of Jared—have life-shaping encounters with the divine, and whose authors have a habit of bidding farewell via allusions to reunions with the divine on Judgement Day². Finally, consider our playing-out of this theme in the ritual of the endowment session, which of course ends with us being ushered into the divine presence and made partakers of the divine gift. On this point, I think that we've inherited certain conceptions of Judgement Day that are wrongheaded and counterproductive. Namely, I think that any sort of Gospel teaching that uses Judgement Day as a prod to repentance ought to be jettisoned, as it’s far better to construct our mental image of that day upon principles of reunion, wholeness, restoration and light. And for good measure, let's emphasize the accessibility and capaciousness of the Celestial Kingdom, a sort of preparatory doctrine for consideration of the concept of inter-kingdom progression. 

I love that as a member of the church I've automatically inherited this complex, fascinating, continent- and globe-spanning history that, if nothing else, adds great texture to my religious identity. Luckily it does more than that: it teaches me that sacred experience with God can lead ordinary persons to build cities, construct temples and settle arid valleys; it teaches me that the teachings of Jesus are indeed world-transforming; and it teaches me about the creative potential of the Word (see Genesis 1:3 & Doctrine and Covenants 109:57). This point might be summed up in a question: What would my life be like without the places of Mormonism—without a miracle of a city perched on an elevated bank of a bend in the Mississippi, without Utah Valley's fire-filled sunsets³, or without New York hillocks that house writings meant to heal the whole world? Perhaps this is what Bushman was getting at when he said that for Mormons, history (and geography, I might add) is theology. 

A final reason that I've decided to embrace Christian discipleship in the Restoration tradition is because being raised in that tradition has socialized me to care about other people in sustained, physical and rigorous ways. Home teaching, quorum callings and messages from the pulpit, chalkboard and church manuals have all contributed to a rather remarkable realization of Christ's command to lose one's life in his work, which is the gathering and transformation of the entire human family. That is, my participation in Church has convinced me that caring about others matters deeply (Kate Holbrook & Sam Brown touch on this idea rather movingly in their March 2020 Ensign article, "The Gift of Participating in Church"). It would be hard to adequately account for the beauty of a religious tradition that fosters this level of investment in the lives of others—miraculous is  probably not too strong a term. 

Conclusion 

We've had sacred experiences which tell us that something real is going on here, we've seen the fruits of gospel living in the lives of others, and we feel that the beauty created by the gospel will always exceed our capacity to express it. 

I have not written these things in order to say anything, but rather so as to not have remained altogether silent. 

Augustine

1.  From a Sam Brown essay on Easter   

2.  Grant Hardy makes this observation in Understanding the Book of Mormon

3.  Douglas Thayer