Heaven and Earth

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges thatJesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.
( 1John 4, 1-3).

I have finished reading Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven. Krakauer tells good stories and he uses the stories to probe some interesting philisophical questions about society and human nature. This book tells simultaneously the history of the Mormon church and several sub-stories that are actually spinoffs from the main story.

I had little knowledge of the Mormon history other than that they settled Utah so it was fascinating to find out the details of their founding by Joseph Smith, their emigration to Missouri and then to Illinois where they built the town of Nauvoo, and then to Utah while it was still a part of Mexico and to find out of the persecution, hardships they endured and the violent practices and bizarre beliefs that they have. We learn of Joseph Smith, his avenging angel Porter Rockwell, Brigham Young, the massacre of the Fancher wagon train by Mormons, and the murder of two of Powell’s men possibley by Mormons. And we are brought into the modern stories of polygamous families, the kidnapping of Pamela Smart, and, central to the book, the horrific murder of Brenda Lafferty and her baby by her two brother’s in law who believed that God had commanded them to kill her.

I believe that there is a spiritual dynamic at work and that there is behind Mormonism a spiritual, anti-christian intelligence, the spirit of the Anti-Christ. These religions arise in response to the spread of vital christianity into a region; they are characterized by a stringent moral code, a firm belief in salvation by works, a propensity to justify violence to defend the faith, and a propensity for their men in leadership to justify the taking of teenage brides. In other words, full opportunity is given for the flesh for the rulers while strict control is exercised over the faithful. I believe Islam is like this, having arisen in response to the early spread of christianity. Another example is the Heaven and Earth Society which arose in the 1850s in China, it also had the outward trappings of christianity, a strict moral code and a propensity for violence which resulted in one of the worst wars in human history, the Hong Xiuquan rebellion.

The book takes a hard look at fundamentalism, the nature of faith and the function and nature of religion in society. The author makes no conclusions of his own but the implication of the book is that religion in general demands conformity and can lead to tragedy. At the end of the book he makes a remark that indicates that he has not found the answers to the big questions of life and he suspects he will not know them in this life, but he does acknowledge yearning to know that he is loved by his creator. I pray that he will come to know that he is.