{"id":40444,"date":"2020-06-06T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2020-06-06T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=40444"},"modified":"2020-06-06T10:26:29","modified_gmt":"2020-06-06T15:26:29","slug":"the-author-and-the-congressman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/the-author-and-the-congressman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Author and the Congressman"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Author<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my childhood, I watched my evangelical classmates devour the <\/span>Left Behind<\/span><\/i> series, curious what a Mormon analogue would look like.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Lo and behold, in 2003 Deseret Book published a novel titled <\/span>The Brothers<\/span><\/i>. Befitting his history as a military pilot, the author had previously focused on military techno-thrillers, and the book series to which <\/span>The Brothers<\/span><\/i> was a prologue \u2014 <\/span>The Great and Terrible \u2014 <\/span><\/i>was mostly of that genre.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While it turned out that <\/span>The Great and Terrible <\/span><\/i>was not exactly comparable to <\/span>Left Behind<\/span><\/i> \u2014 it wasn’t about the end of days \u2014 <\/span>The Brothers<\/span><\/i> did not disappoint. I unironically love the book as a ingenuous crystallization of a certain moment in Mormon political theology, projected back into a narrative set in the premortal, pre-Earth life.<\/span><\/p>\n

The author prefaces the book with an Author\u2019s Note, in which he admits that he “was forced to take author\u2019s license in many of the details presented in this book. The simple fact is that we know very little of what life was like for us in the premortal world, and the war in heaven is a mystery we know even less about. Yet any literary work, especially fiction, requires some sense of time, location, conflict, and description in order for readers to allow themselves to be pulled into the story.” Without these, he says, “the story turns out to be little more than a series of conversations.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He has added aspects “to help provide a setting and an atmosphere,” as well as close relationships between characters. “If there are details, symbols, or descriptions with which you take issue,” he implores the reader, “I ask for your understanding.”<\/span><\/p>\n

All this is fair: the average Deseret Book customer probably doesn\u2019t have Plato\u2019s appetite for philosophical dialogues.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most conspicuous, though, are the <\/span>absences <\/span><\/i>in his disclaimer. The author worries that a reader might object to buildings, geography, trees and parks, and “families” in a depiction of the premortal life, but he is silent about the theology<\/em> he presents.<\/span><\/p>\n

He concludes his Author\u2019s Note by admitting, “though my primary goal has been to entertain, it has always been my hope that I might provide a greater sense of our purpose and place in this world.” Given this careful statement of intention, as well as the book\u2019s habit of nigh-didactic exposition, it\u2019s reasonable to conclude that the settings, interactions, and ideologies in the novel reflect the author\u2019s basic moral and theological worldview.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, here are some theological notions that the author apparently thinks aren\u2019t matters of artistic license, drawn from a single chapter (Chapter 11):<\/span><\/p>\n