The Best Wisdom of our Time

The following comes from a scene of The West Wing (Season 1, Ep. 14, "Take This the Sabbath Day"). A high profile capital case has just been reviewed by the Supreme Court; the conviction and sentence were upheld. The staff of the West Wing now has just over 48 hours to decide if the President should commute the death sentence.

This scene is a particularly profound moment. Toby, the Communications Director, has gone to see his rabbi about the issue. The dialog follows:

TOBY: The Torah doesn’t prohibit capital punishment.

RABBI GLASSMAN: No.

TOBY: It says, “An eye for an eye.”

RABBI GLASSMAN: You know what it also says? It says a rebellious child can be brought to the city gates and stoned to death. It says homosexuality is an abomination and punishable by death. It says men can be polygamous and slavery is acceptable. For all I know, that thinking reflected the best wisdom of its time, but it’s just plain wrong by any modern standard. Society has a right to protect itself, but it doesn’t have a right to be vengeful. It has a right to punish, but it doesn’t have a right to kill.

(watch the scene)

I'm not going to talk about the death penalty and I don't want to debate that today. But I think it could be useful to apply a principle from that scene into an old topic that has publicly reared it's head again. The Washington post recently ran an article, "The Genesis of a church’s stand on race." In this article, a BYU professor makes an attempt to explain the banning of the LDS priesthood from blacks as a God-inspired directive for their own protection.

I won't bother to go into detail about how condescending the statements are¹. What I want to know this: why is it so hard to say that racism might have played a part or been the cause of the ban? It was the 1840's! Are we really going to be surprised that racism existed in 1840? It seems painfully obvious to me that racism was probably a factor in the horrific decision to deny blacks the priesthood.

For years, scholars both inside and outside of the Church have searched for the origin of the ban. No one really has any idea when or how or why it started. Most of the evidence and commentary I've seen (admittedly, not a whole lot) paints a pretty good picture for racism.

"For all I know, that thinking reflected the best wisdom of its time."

Sure, it was crappy wisdom. Sure, there might be other factors (political issues around slavery, for instance). Sure, the wisdom of the time was no reason for the ban to endure so long (For all the talk of the fallibility of the prophets, Mormons, God bless them, sure have a hard time admitting that their prophets actually have faults). But in the context of the time, I can understand why the ban would be instituted, even if it was wrong (and make no mistake, I believe it was wrong).

So why would God allow his prophet to institute such an abominable policy?

Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, God grits his teeth and endures the worst possible characteristics in man-kind in hopes that maybe he can soften our hearts enough that over time, we might behave the way he actually wants us to behave? Remember, this is the same God that allowed entire populations to be slaughtered because the weren't descended from Jacob. This is the same God who allowed homosexuals to be put to death; the same God who allowed children to be stoned for being disobedient to their parents; the same God who allowed women to be decried unclean for having the audacity to menstruate.

It's taken us a few thousand years, but by golly we figured out all by ourselves that those things are wrong. Let us now develop the courage to look back and say, "For all I know, that thinking reflected the best wisdom of its time, but it’s just plain wrong by any modern standard."

I'll join with the Church's most recent statement and "unequivocally condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church." If the priesthood ban was instituted or perpetuated because of racism, I have complete faith that the Lord will chasten the instigators and perpetuators in a manner suitable to his infinite wisdom.

Given a few thousand more years, maybe we might finally start to act the way God would like us to act. For now, I have to deal with the fact that someone is going to look at my day and say, "For all I know, that thinking reflected the best wisdom of its time, but it’s just plain wrong by any modern standard."


¹ I will point out for defenders that Professor Bott's (now removed) blog contains many similar comments to what was reported in the article. This really damages the argument that he was misquoted, as he and his defenders claim.