Julie M. Smith

When, at the Lord’s command, Ezekiel ate a scroll, he proclaimed that it was as sweet as honey (see Ezekiel 3:3). This image of Ezekiel incorporating the Lord’s word into his very being—internalizing and digesting it so that he can convey the message to the people—suggests that the word of the Lord can be delightful and satisfying.

But this isn’t the kind of scripture study most people experience; the scroll tastes like cafeteria food a few days past its prime—bland and a bit stale. Though there are many ways to spice up the scroll, one of my favorite strategies is to focus on the differing perspectives the scriptures present.

Many readers do not even realize that there are different perspectives. Being taught a quiescent approach to sacred text, we tend to glide along agreeably without asking ourselves how the text before us might differ from other portions of the canon. For example, the chronologies of Jesus’ last days as presented in the Gospels of Mark and John are incompatible: in Mark, the Passover lamb is killed, Jesus celebrates Passover with his disciples, and then he is crucified on the next day (see Mark 14:12 and 15:1). In John’s Gospel, the Passover lamb is killed at precisely the same moment Jesus is crucified (see John 19:14).

If readers do notice a clear disagreement, their first tendency is to try to find a way to solve the mismatch: hence the numerous (and often byzantine) theories that attempt to reconcile the chronologies. Methodologically, they all rely on the same assumption: that the entire canon of scripture should speak with one consistent voice.

In my experience, this is an incorrect assumption. The blemishes in the text are not wrinkles to be ironed out as quickly as possible but rather textures that enhance the reading experience. The conflict between Mark and John could be interpreted to mean that the authors are more concerned with theology than chronology—each using the order of events to teach important truths about the death of Jesus. Mark’s priority is to show Jesus as re-imagining the symbolism of the Passover, applying it to his own life and death, while John wants to equate Jesus’ death with the death of the Passover lamb. Both of these messages are important and true. To ignore them because our gaze is focused on an irreconcilable historical problem would be to miss a major theological opportunity.

If we attempt to solve the discrepancy, we miss at least one of the symbolic messages about the meaning of Jesus’ death—if not both. If we ignore the discrepancy, we end up privileging one story over the other and, in a sense, silencing one of the gospel writers. Neither of these options is productive. It’s better to acknowledge the disjuncture and explore it. The recognition that the gospels present more than one view of the meaning of Jesus’ death implies that its meaning is multifaceted and well worth our close, creative attention. We should treat the differences as—to borrow an analogy from the tech world—features, not bugs.

But let’s push the analogy one step further. What if the presence of conflicting material within scripture is intentional? What if, instead of being the unavoidable result of flawed and fallen humanity, the inclusion of different perspectives is deliberate? What if God’s design for scripture is that it reflect a multiplicity of voices? What if inspiration is born in divergence? As biblical scholar Peter Enns writes:

Judaism seems to have a good handle on [something that] . . . many Christians do not: debating each other, and debating God, is what God wants. We can see the same sort of attitude in the rich tradition of Jewish medieval commentaries on the Bible. The sages of Judaism debate the meaning of biblical passages, often arriving at contradictory explanations—and all of it is recorded and preserved as part of the sacred tradition, without any need to resolve the problem and arrive at a final answer. Even in their debates, though, we see their affirmations: God exists; he has given us his law; it is important that we wrestle with it and make sure we honor God in how we keep his law—even if we disagree. But killing the possibility of debate is what kills the faith. The debate keeps the conversation at the center of the community. Ending the debate, getting to the right answer, is not the prime directive in the spiritual life. You can tussle with each other and with God (and win!), and it’s all good. The back-and-forth with the Bible is where God is found. Enter the dialogue and you find God waiting for you, laughing with delight, ready to be a part of that back-and-forth.¹

Matthew Richard Schlimm cleverly exemplified this approach—delighting in differences instead of downplaying them—in This Strange and Sacred Scripture: Wrestling with the Old Testament and Its Oddities. The book is an attempt to help modern readers appreciate the Old Testament—including the parts that rub our modern sensibilities the wrong way, such as when God orders genocide (1 Samuel 15:2–3) and condones slavery (Exodus 21:1–11). One very brief portion of the book contains a dialogue between Ruth and Ezra. This dialogue is completely fictional—Ruth and Ezra were not even alive at the same time—but it hews closely to what is known of them from the biblical texts: Ezra insisted that Israelite men divorce their foreign wives (see Ezra 9:10), and Ruth, of course, was a foreign wife (see Ruth 4). Given this profound disagreement on such a fundamental matter, Ruth and Ezra would certainly have had plenty to talk about. In Schlimm’s dialogue, Ezra and Ruth present arguments in favor of their respective positions regarding what we would today call interfaith marriages. They both advocate for their positions with clarity and charity. Refreshingly, no one is declared the winner—the focus is on this wrestle with the complexities of marriage outside the covenant. And in Schlimm’s dialogue, these complexities are not hidden beneath a veneer of sprawling academic prose but rather presented in a reader-friendly fashion.

Though the dialogue was a rather unusual form of biblical interpretation (and I normally respond rather curmudgeonly to scriptural interpretation that is creative or speculative) I was completely captivated. Schlimm really did stay tethered to the scriptural record; the artifice of placing Ruth and Ezra in dialogue was not an attempt to re-write the story so that it would be more palatable to current sensibilities or in order to solve some supposed problem or fill a gap in the text, but a device to articulate a tension that already exists between the stories of Ruth and Ezra.

I remember thinking that I wished I could read an entire book of such dialogues. Then it dawned on me that I know a lot of really clever people and that, if I asked nicely, they might contribute to such a book. So I asked, and they responded. And I couldn’t be happier with the results. Kofford Books released As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture in the summer of 2016.

What the various writers have accomplished in this unorthodox format is compelling. For example, Mark T. Decker presents a dialogue featuring Jacob (from the Book of Mormon) and Joseph Smith talking about polygamy. Though the conflict between them is obvious, the real depth of the piece comes forth when Mark shows that this is not a conversation about polygamy per se but rather an exploration of rules and how exceptions should be made. Thus the topic is more relevant than one might initially presume. In another dialogue, Miranda Wilcox brings Hannah and Sariah together to converse about the proper role of complaining in the life of a righteous person. Their disagreement is as muted as it is profound, and as immediately relevant as it is philosophically compelling.

Michael Austin brings Job and Abraham into conversation. Both of these men were tested and found faithful, but they show rather different attitudes toward sacrifice. “Abraham obeys unquestioningly, and Job complains vigorously,” Austin points out. It’s fascinating to watch as Austin’s Job presses Abraham on the difference between the two men’s willingness to acquiesce to God’s tests. Nevertheless, as Austin notes, “God’s responses to Job and Abraham are nearly identical. . . . both passed with flying colors . . . . That God ultimately commended both approaches shows us that the Divine Mind is perhaps more open, and more willing to change, than three millennia of believers have understood.”

For me, the most important aspect of this collection is two-fold. First, it balances inspiration with imperfection in scripture. There is no reason to think that scripture writers, even when acting under inspiration, were able to burst the limits of language. Rather, we have evidence that they were all too aware of these restrictions and bemoaned them: the very title page of the Book of Mormon warns the audience that there may be faults therein. I resonate with Joseph Smith’s recognition that all human writing is flawed in some way (“the little narrow prison almost as it were totel [sic] darkness of paper pen and ink and a crooked broken scattered and imperfect language”), but this does not mean that the product is without value. These dialogues display a strong commitment to the inspiration of scripture, while exploring the scriptural authors’ diverging opinions. This is a model for those who struggle with how to value scripture once its imperfections are acknowledged.

Second, each dialogue models civil, respectful discourse. It goes without saying that in the current political climate, polite and productive conversation between those who disagree is something of a lost art. And in the LDS community, which makes such strong truth claims, the ability to engage different opinions without contention is a skill for which we don’t see many models. These dialogues provide a template for what courteous and productive disagreement looks like. I hope that these dialogues counter the current trend to hunker down with the like-minded, instead showing what can be gained by respectfully and openly engaging those we disagree with. As Proverbs 27:17 (which the title of the book was drawn from) says, just as iron can sharpen iron, engaging a friend can sharpen one’s own thoughts and beliefs.

This approach of exploring conflict instead of smoothing it over is unusual in the Mormon tradition and may be discomfiting to some readers. But there are significant benefits to focusing on contrasting opinions within scripture and Church history. First, it can enliven and invigorate one’s scripture study; there is something inherently intriguing about wrestling with the contours of a conflict. Second, knowing that multivocality has always been part of our faith tradition can prepare Latter-day Saints to encounter difficult Church policies or practices more constructively. Rather than insisting that there has always been a uniformity of opinion on a given subject, we can explore the various perspectives and voices surrounding an issue, finding new insights and subtleties that can prepare future paths.