Not Buying It wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:24 am
I don’t think Joseph ever got up in the morning and said “Hmm, my Church is getting a little stale, I need to find some gnostic ideas I can steal and make into doctrine”. I think he was a pretty creative, imaginative guy who realized he had to keep coming up with new stuff to keep his followers feeling more special than the rest of the world, but I think incorporating esoteric ideas into the Church was more organic, a natural result of his creative mind using whatever it had at hand, rather than the result of a dogged search for ideas he could steal. No Church leader since has had his creativity or vision, especially not President Nelson, who apparently thinks changing the name of “Home teaching” to “Ministering” is revelatory and visionary. But Joseph was a guy who could see a traveling mummy show and think “I can make up a story about these mummies and the scrolls that are with them that will really get my followers going”. Or become a mason and think “OK, I can work with this”. I think he was always using existing ideas, but I am not sure he was always searching with the conscious goal of finding something he could steal.
Think of L. Ron Hubbard. I am convinced he is the best corollary to Joseph in modern times. He was always coming up with new, crazy crap to impress his followers. He was incredibly imaginative and prolific. By the time he died he was pretty much deified by his followers, and they had a reached a critical mass that allowed scientology to go on without him. So it was with Mormonism - initially Joseph needed new ideas all the time to keep the thing going, but once he had a critical mass of followers who revered his name - helped considerably by a well-timed martyrdom to deify him even further - Mormonism could move forward without him.
Yes, Joseph constantly borrowed ideas, but I’m not sure how much it was due to a constant search for ideas to steal. I don’t think he was that strategic about it. I think he was creative enough he didn’t need to be.
I look at it this way.
Once you go down that road of producing "new revelation" and you begin promising your followers further light and knowledge, sooner or later you have to produce. The D&C has numerous references to new power and knowledge being revealed from on high. The followers were commanded to prepare themselves, if I recall correctly.
Joseph had kind of painted himself into a corner. He needed new and exotic revelation which he had been promising in order to keep the thing solvent. So he would have been looking to find it.
At the same time he was battling apostates on every side. He also needed an instrument that would secure or at a minimum, determine who was loyal to him and who wasn't.
With Hiram's familiarity with Masonic rituals, I think it became an obvious fit that would accomplish both things in one go.
Was it more organic than calculating? Maybe. Maybe it was a guy in a fight who just reaches for the nearest heavy object that will give him some advantage.
But he was motivated by more than just survival. Joseph loved the adoration. He loved having control and power. Secret knowledge brings power. It's job security. He controlled the gateway to God and you only enter that gateway by pleasing Joseph. That is pretty calculating when you think about it. It's exactly the same method used anciently by gnostics in the early church. Perhaps his method of coming up with his crap doctrine on the fly was more organic. He had to be able to evolve along with the changing dynamics.
And that was his strength as a good con man among a mixed crowd of gullible people and people who were getting wise to his game.
Keep the wolves at bay while continuing to fleece the rest of the flock.
"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily."
"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."
George Washington