The Dangers of Faith

Jon Krakauer is the type of writer whom you can reliably count on to put the facts together in a way that tell the story he thinks is most worth telling. It's both effective journalism and a sly wink at something we all know to be true: One man's truth is another man's fairy tale; one man's faith is another man's lunacy. Many of Krakauer's subjects would be called faithful and insane by turns, depending on who is doing the talking. When Krakauer himself is doing the talking, Mormons are insane.

He makes a strong case. When you look closely at extreme fundamentalist sects of any religion, whether it be Mormon or Muslim or evangelical Christian, the picture is never pretty. The main crime that Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven exposes is particularly hideous: convinced by their fundamentalist beliefs that they were being called to the deed, two brothers murdered their sister-in-law and baby niece in cold blood. One of them, Ron Lafferty, has been been on death row for more than 30 years following his conviction. He has good lawyers, so he's yet to actually be executed. The other, Dan Lafferty, is serving life without parole and recently used his prophetic skills to encourage another Utah couple to kill themselves and their children. Horrifying stuff.

Krakauer's book has three objectives. The first is to tell the Laffertys' story. Extensive interviews with Dan allowed him to do that well. The second is to provide a comprehensive history of Mormonism in order to make the argument that its teachings directly led to the Laffertys' behavior, however much mainstream Mormons have tried to distance themselves from the situation. And the third is to suggest, politely and vaguely, that all faith is both delusional and designed to make people do crazy, even evil, things while feeling completely justified.

Many of the things that Krakauer says about the origins of faith are compelling. He quotes the psychiatrist Anthony Storr, who says that many religious fanatics find their faith after "a period of mental distress or physical illness, in which the guru has been fruitlessly searching for an answer to his own emotional problems." This makes perfect sense to me. After all, as C.S. Lewis says, "Pain is God's megaphone to a morally deaf world." We are made to worship, to find meaning and authority in God, and it's perfectly reasonable to think that many people come to that conclusion in a time of crisis. Unfortunately, too many don't know where to look for the solution, and then we have guys like Joseph Smith who exploit that, and boom. Mormons.

Another reason we tend to seek religious belief is our need for order. A former Mormon, DeLoy Bateman, tells Krakauer that "you have to remember what a huge comfort the religion is. It provides all the answers. It makes life simple. Nothing makes you feel better than doing what the prophet commands you to do. If you have some controversial issue that you're dealing with--let's say you owe a lot of money to somebody, and you don't have means to pay them--you go in and talk to the prophet, and he might tell you, 'You don't have to pay the money back. The Lord says it's Okay.' And if you just do what the prophet says, all the responsibility for your actions is now totally in his hands. You can refuse to pay the guy, or even kill somebody, or whatever, and feel completely good about it. And that's a real big part of what holds this religion together: it's not having to make those critical decisions that many of us have to make, and be responsible for your decisions." Wow. I would love to not be responsible for my decisions anymore. Especially if it was something that made my life a whole lot easier, like not having to pay a debt I couldn't afford. And it's kind of shocking how often these Mormon "prophets" hear things that ultimately benefit them. In fact, Ron Lafferty's wife left him in part because his sister-in-law, the one he murdered, encouraged her to. So how convenient that Ron then "heard from the Lord" that his sister-in-law needed to be "taken out of the way"! But the point is, we all want what religion provides.

It's entirely understandable why Krakauer feels averse to religion. He sees a man's natural need for worship and order brought to its logical and most evil extreme in these murders, and concludes that religion itself is to blame. However, he makes no effort to explain what distinguishes other religions from Mormonism, and even goes so far as to say "Those who would assail The Book of Mormon should bear in mind that its veracity is no more dubious than the veracity of the Bible, say, or the Qur'an, or the sacred texts of most other religions. The latter texts simply enjoy the considerable advantage of having made their public debut in the shadowy recesses of the ancient past, and are thus much harder to refute." Huh? I'm not sure how extensively Krakauer has researched these other books, but he provides numerous examples of how The Book of Mormon has been proven factually false, and no one has yet been able to do that for the Bible. In the end, I'm going with the book that hasn't yet been wrong, not the one that's old.

I feel bad for Krakauer. He has exposed a truly terrifying thread in the world's fastest-growing religion, and he's right in his assertion that while we allow religion to exist, there will always be people who believe they are called to do evil things. But the answer isn't to throw it all out. The answer is to keep searching. There IS a truth, and it's the only one that brings God to us instead of us to God. Without it, I'm sure the honest will chime in with Krakauer's last words in this book: "Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why--which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive." I appreciate the "we," but I wish he had had the courage to say "I."