Dear Sally - About that Joseph Smith Guy...(3 of 7)

 An excerpt from my letter to an incarcerated pen-pal, modified for this post.

Dear Sally,  

    Thank you for the “rebuttal” on the “What Mormons Teach” article. I think I have ten years worth of correspondence from your LDS materials. I realized, by the way, that the article would probably be offensive. I didn’t send it for the purpose of offending you, but sometimes offenses can’t be helped.  (Can you accept that I care enough about you to speak about it? ) I think that Mormons will always have this challenge of being offended because Joseph Smith himself seems to have assured continual offenses to Mormon sensibilities right from the start of his new religion.  His testimony states that he:

    “retired to the woods...on a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty.” His purpose was to “inquire of the Lord... which of all the sects was right.” He “kneeled down” and “was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame” him. “Thick darkness gathered around” and then a “pillar of light” appeared over his head “above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon” him. It was then that he saw “two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description.” One of the “personages” then called him “by name and said, pointing to the other - This is My Beloved Son, Hear Him!” (source: Another Gospel, © 1989 Ruth A. Tucker, Academie Books, Zondervan.)

At any rate, when he asked the question on his mind, “which of all the sects was right” and “which should I join?”  The answer came back, “they were all wrong.”  Interesting. His own father and grandfather used to say the same thing quite frequently, being both opposed and disdainful of “organized religion,” according to his biographers.  I imagine Joseph Smith heard “they’re all wrong” a lot as he grew up.  It’s really too bad Dale Carnegie wasn’t around yet - young Joseph could have used one of those classes in “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”  I’m pretty sure that announcing, “Hey!  Jesus himself told me that you guys got it all wrong!” is not exactly the best way to win people to your spiritual viewpoint.
Since you quoted from Psalm 139 in regard to the Mormon doctrine of pre-mortal existence, I thought I would investigate. So here is what that Bible says:

Psalm 139:13-16 NKJV
13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
 Marvelous are Your works,
 And that my soul knows very well. 
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
 When I was made in secret,
 And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
 And in Your book they all were written,
 The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.

There is no mention here of a heavenly pre-existence for the psalmist; the references are to being formed in the womb, a very earthly process. 

Christians believe Jesus Christ was pre-existent, but not human beings. Some Christian churches have a doctrinal position on it and some don’t. Is there a problem with believing in a pre-mortal existence? Perhaps not (it's not clear to me why Joseph Smith made such a big deal out of it). But it sure leads to some strange doctrinal positions by the LDS - like the reason we ended up on earth with bodies was to accomplish the growth we couldn’t attain to as disembodied spirits in heaven. This is something apparently required by the LDS for “exalted god-ness.” More on that later.  Evidently, Joseph Smith was great at proof-texting, but terrible as a Bible scholar.

Next installment:
LDS references (from LDS.org) from the Bible supposedly supporting Pre-mortal Existence.