I have been having an interesting discussion along these lines with "Always" over at the Keving Graham forums. "Always" is taking the relativist approach.
Isaiah 55:8-9
For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my
ways, saith the LORD. ...
I don’t believe finite man without help from above will successfully judge what an infinite Being will or will not do rightly....
[The Sister Mary Lisa blog] reminds me of the Steve Benson’s of mankind, who do a good job of letting the “abundance of their heart” hang out in public view, while pointing the holy finger of distain at dead people who cannot defend themselves, which is rather cowardly, upon subjects written by those with an ax to grind, for who knows why. The fact that they would descend to such levels, tells a tale of “their” life.
I replied,
Is it similarly "cowardly" to grind the axe against Jim Jones and Heaven's Gate? The case of Joseph Smith is less extreme than these others, but we could use the same logic to vindicate them: "God's ways are not our ways, and you're just a finite man, so who are you to judge whether or not God would force an entire community of people to commit suicide? Only a coward would judge the dead!"
Always replies,
All I am saying is let people speak for themselves. A bunch of people who voluntarily drink some punch simply because they were told to speaks for itself... I thought [the Heaven's Gate people] were nuts….but I felt sorry for them. And I didn’t spend any time writing some article to try and degrade them.
And I said,
Imagine, though, if there was a lively and healthy religion today based on Heaven's Gate or Jonestown, which glorified the early days of those faiths and covered up or ignored the "real" story of what went on there. Imagine also that your aunt, uncle, and several friends are members of this faith. Would you want your friends to dedicate their lives to something so patently false? I suspect you might even find yourself writing an article "exposing" what a nut Jim Jones was. It's one thing not to degrade the dead. It's quite another to let millions of people build a belief system around a man whose actions were patently ungodly. Maybe you don't care that Joseph Smith did certain things. Maybe you are content to let the past be past and let God sort it out. But I am committed to finding religious truth (rather than a religious sugar pill) to guide my life and the lives of those I care about. In the search for religious truth, the study of the past is of supreme importance. What's more, we must not only study the past but also pass judgment on it and arrive at conclusions about it.
Feel free to point your own holy finger of disdain at us Steve Bensons who have an axe to grind, but I for one will continue to expose charlatanry wherever it is found.
Maybe the fact that people would drink poisoned punch just because they were told to may well speak for itself in my or your eyes. But for people who are a
part of a cult like Heaven's Gate, it does
not speak for itself. Jim Jones and Heaven's Gate are part of a long tradition of religious deception, and I think it is
very important to tell the world about them and to expose the dangers of said deception. The very idea that we would avoid telling the true story of Jonestown for fear of "degrading the dead" is patently absurd. There are important truths to be learned from its example, not the least of which is that when a religious leader starts asking people to do things that seem
morally wrong, the red flags should go up. We should ask ourselves, is this religious leader following in the tradition of the tens of thousands of religious deceivers who have been hoodwinking people throughout history?
I can't imagine letting religious falsehood go unchallenged. If there really is a true religion (and surely Mormons would agree that there is), then it seems to me that it is of
supreme importance to figure out which one it is! How can a sincerely religious person commit him/herself to thoroughgoing relativism?
-CK