Above the resurrected beings is deity. And this is one place where Sunstone readers made their views known.

Sunstone reprinted this comic in 1989 from the Wittenberg Door, a magazine of Christian satire. According to editor Elbert Peck, Sunstone received a barrage of complaints about this cartoon—though none of them got into the letters to the editor section. Oddly, though, this Pat Bagley cartoon did not receive any complaints, despite it being about the same member of the Godhead.

Why were Sunstone readers bugged by the portrayal of toddler Jesus and not correlated Jesus?

I think it’s about emotion. When Mormons talk about Jesus, one of our main metaphors is that he is a kind, older brother. We talk about how he experienced all our sins and sorrows with compassion during the Atonement. He is the guy who is out seeking his lost sheep. The guy who carries us on the sand when we can no longer walk. We invest a lot of emotion in Jesus, and we feel like he invests a lot back. We talk about how God is loving, but he is also very distant. And he is also the one that Jesus has to appease. God is the authoritarian one; Jesus is our big helpful brother. We couldn’t make it back without him. So he is much more tender territory for Mormons. We probably feel as though any humor about Jesus—especially Baby Jesus—is mockery. Any questioning of him is biting the hand that feeds you. On the other hand, correlated Jesus doesn’t have any of those connections. We know that this cartoon is about church norms, not about Jesus himself.

So, apparently the First Temptation cartoon backlash was widely enough known, amongst Sunstone readers, anyway, that a rule grew up around it in an article Sunstone published by Ed Snow in 2001.

It was called “The 10 Commandments of Mormon Humor.” And one of said commandments was “Thou shall not make fun of deity.” “Deity should be off-limits in Mormon humor,” Snow wrote. “For example, roadshows involving God as a supporting character, cartoons in Sunstone depicting Jesus, and limericks about the Holy Ghost are very, very risky.” And we have pretty much followed that commandment ever since. Jesus himself has only shown up in one comic since then, but all you see is his baby hand.

We seemed to have a little more wiggle room for other deities. For example, this next cartoon features two heavenly parents.

But these next three cartoons only imply God’s presence.

This brings us back to our question about whether Moroni’s head sticking out of a hat crosses onto sacred ground. Which we will explore in the next post.