The Golden Tablets
Monday, December 14, 2009 at 07:56PM 
About twenty years ago I was leading a project for Northwestern Mutual to select the software the company would use to support its foray into financial planning. It was an interesting time. I was among a minority within the company who believed that broad-based financial planning that took into account not only protection of families and businesses, but also accumulation for retirement and other life goals was the way of the future. The majority of the field and home office executives were on the other side of the table, believing that the company should play to its strength, life insurance. After all, we were the best life insurance company in the country by nearly every measure. Why should we venture into things like mutual funds, annuities, and managed offerings?
Despite the fact that I was in the minority, the demographics and competitive forces so strongly favored my position, I was given a little leeway. Along with a small team, I looked into charging fees for advice and using software to develop full-blown financial plans. One of the software companies we looked at closely was located in Salt Lake City. The company's name was Sterling-Wentworth, although neither the founder nor the president of the company carried that name. In fact, the software, a forerunner of some of the "artificial intelligence" software that's available today, was the brainchild of a Brigham Young professor, and the president was a hired gun by the name of Gary Williams.
Before recommending the software to the company and training our agents on its use. I wanted to spend some time in Sterling-Wentworth's shorts. My little team and I headed out for week. Randy was a contemporary of mine, not an attorney but a really saavy guy whose judgement I could trust. Erik was a young attorney straight out of law school. What Erik lacked in experience and polish, he made up for with bluster and smarts. I knew I could count on Randy to keep me on track and Erik to let me know when Sterling-Wentworth was blowing wind up our skirts.
I didn't know a damn thing about Mormons. I don't know if we even had Mormons in Elkhart, Indiana where I'd grown up. But everyone who worked for Sterling-Wentworth was a Mormon through and through.
I learned fast. They were straight shooters, these Mormon, sober and straight as the day was long. They were also damned good salesmen and hard-nosed business men. Their offices were in the foothills above the city, looking down on the famous lake to the west and up into the mountains and the famous ski sites to the east. Far in the distance, we could make out the Bonnieville Salt Flats.
The first couple of days they turned their software inside out for us. The professor came over from the college and answered every question we could throw at him. Williams and his minions offered us Coke instead of coffee and had no suggestions where we might go for a drink. They sold hard, ten hours a day.
On the third day, Gary, a very elegant and erudite fellow (especially for a salesman) wanted to take us out for dinner. After two nights of dining in our hotel rooms, snorting little bottles of liquor bootlegged from the flight out, we were more than ready. Erik was a player with the ladies, a real cocksman, and regularly tied one on come the weekend. Randy and I, old married guys, lived vicariously through his adventure. We were all feeling a little deprived and depraved amid the austerity surrounding us in SLC.
So, Gary took us out to dinner. But when I tried to order a bottle of wine, he graciously explained that his religion wouldn't allow him to remain at our table, if I did so. Randy and Erik were solid Catholics while I was a backslid Baptist. Drinking came second nature to us. Even so, we were willing to respect the man for his beliefs, notwithstanding the damage to our temperments.
But Gary's comment inspired questions and a discussion about religion. We began to inquire about the Mormons and their faith. Gary, an elder in his church, proceeded to enlighten us. After dinner (sans the wine), the discussion continued and Gary volunteered to take us down to the tablernacle and templel, which were just a few blocks away. Mormon Square, he assured us, was the most sacred place for those of the Mormon faith.
The air was crisp, the sky clear. All about the Square were Christmas lights. It was quite beautiful. Gary told us about the efforts of the original believers to cross the Rockies, following their persecution out east. We saw the famous statues and buildings. We listened in awe about how following Joseph Smith's death, Brigham Young led his followers through great hardship to this place and how their faith was so strong that the first thing they did upon arriving was build their Tabernacle in praise of the Lord.
Even though I really needed a drink, I was damned impressed.
Erik, brash and inquisitive, had more questions. He wanted to know where the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith had given his people and which inspired their faith had derived from.
"Given to him by the Angel Moroni," Gary Williams explained, "back east, before he came to Missouri with his small flock."
"An angel?" Erik said, somewhat skeptically.
"Yes," Gary went on, Moroni awakened his from his sleep and led Joseph Smith into the forest. There Moroni revealed the Golden Tablets on which were inscribed the Book of Mormon and the history of the Lost Tribes.
"Golden Tablets," young Erik repeated, three days deprived of women and booze. "Golden Tablets."
"Yes." Gary went on, "and after transcribing the Book from the Tablets, Moroni returned Joseph Smith to his bed. Upon waking, Smith proclaimed his vision and insight to the world."
Erik considered it for a moment. "So, what happened to the Golden Tablets?" he asked earnestly.
"Well," Gary explained, not missing a beat, "they were lost."
Standing there in the holiest of Mormon sites, I felt a slippage. I knew things were about to go downhill. Randy and I exchanged a wary glance.
"Lost?" young Erik asked. "What do you mean lost?"
"They were never found. Instead we have Joseph Smith's word and the Book of Mormon."
"You mean he lost the fucking tablets?" Erik said, loud enough for all around us to hear. "He lost those Golden Tablets?"
This from a man who accepted without question that Christ was born of a virgin and later rose from the dead.
To his credit, Gary held it together (after all, we were the customer, Goliath to Sterling-Wentworth's David). "That's what our religion teaches," he said.
Maybe it was the deprivation, the forced sobriety. Whatever it was, it really set Erik off. Who could believe such a thing? No one but an idiot loses Golden Tablets. On and on. After a while, Williams took offense. Erik offered to introduce him to a priest and maybe save his sorry soul from hellfire and damnation. Maybe, Erik suggested, Williams could at least have a drink with his priest, by God. It might do his tight ass good. Randy and I had to separate them in front of Brigham Young's statue. We bid Gary good night.
As it turned out, corporate life and meetings went on. Although no apologies were exchanged, despite my chastisement of Erik, everyone was polite in the cathedral of corporate profit taking. The next evening, Randy and Erik and I drove an hour across the salt flats to gamble and drink at a Nevada border town casino. We put the nastly little affair behind us. Gary Williams never mentioned the incident again. For years, I told the story as a cautionary tale to young attorneys who found themselves under my direction.
As it turned out, I recommended the S-W software, but the company wasn't ready to move in that direction. Today, Northwestern sells more mutual funds and annuities than life products. Erik went on to lead the company's annuity department before taking a job as an exec with a mutual fund company. Randy raised four boys and is nearing a comfortable retirement. Gary Williams and Sterling-Wentworth survived, became a big player in financial planning software, and underwent more than a few metamorphises since.
As for me, every year at Christmas, I think about the Golden Tablets, consider how one man could see their loss as a deal breaker, while another man took their loss as an article of faith.
Maybe that's the mystery of Christmas.
Golden Tablets, Joseph Smith, Mormons, religion in Creative 
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Reader Comments (5)
1. You went to Temple Square, not Mormon Square
2. You saw the Tabernacle and the Temple. There isn’t a Mormon cathedral.
3. Our Word of Wisdom does not allow us to drink, but it does not compel use to be rude.
4. The “Golden Plates” were not lost; the same angel who delivered them to Joseph Smith took them back when he was done translating them.
I really do enjoy reading things like this, and gleaming the bits of truth out of the general misunderstanding.
The mystery of Christmas indeed.
What an interesting and telling story. I have always found it curious how most people are able to spot (and question)the leaps of faith required in other religions but not in their own. And of course everone thinks thinks theirs is the "truth", right down to the specific details.
There was a Mormon church in Elkhart, on Hively Ave. just west of Main. It has since moved a few blocks away. I never knew any members personally and obviously you didn't either. Elkhart is and was quite religiously diverse, we just weren't paying much attention back then. Just the multitude of derivations of the Mennonites, Amish and German Baptists are more than some communities have across the entire religious spectrum.
I worked with them on positioning devices for satellite dishes. They were way ahead of the curve on satellite transmission. Utah has vast spaces, and cable TV was not happening. They didn't wait. I also suspect they had some Mormon channels, though I cannot confirm it. They had really developed the system, but they needed strong, precise, weather-proof actuators to position these dishes, which were 10-12 foot size at the time. They had gathered low-noise amplifiers, and had mastered microprocessors to an impressive degree. In 1983, that was not nearly as common as it is now.
They were wonderful people. Hard bargainers, but never deceitful. The town was very clean, and the people all were cheerful and pleasant. Some people would say they seemed a bit "Stepford" but I think it was genuine.
During my many visits, Salt Lake flooded the city, from the melting mountain snow pack. They had the whole main drag (State Street?) sandbagged, with an amazing river rushing through town. People were helping others, and it was very comforting to see and hear that they really look after their neighbors. Mormon or not, by the way. It was quite a humbling thing to see.
It was hard to get a drink. I stayed in a Holiday Inn, and they had to send me next door to join a club of some sort. Them I had to go somewhere else and get a small bottle, and bring it back to the club to be mixed. It all seemed like an elaborate system to keep people from drinking. Seemed like a speakeasy, in some ways. Odd, but what can I say? It was their town, not mine.
We have the Mormon Temple in Kensington, MD, which is amazing. You come around the Beltway, and suddenly there it is, like Oz rising above the road, it seems. Beautiful place. Somebody keeps spray painting the railroad bridge across the Beltway, "Surrender Dorothy!" I have some stories about it, but am running out of energy. I have done genealogical research there, and the resources are fantastic. They really are the leaders in that.
About the Angel Moroni, I too was confused about the whole thing. At the age of 32, I found it a bit of a stretch. Yet, one must look at the believers, the culture, and how it has evolved. Me, I would like to see the stone tablets given to Moses, and more actual proof of many things when it comes to human belief systems. I am a natural skeptic, probably due to my scientific training.
Still, I think it holds as much water as many other belief systems. The Mormons have a supportive society, good morals, a great work ethic, and many other fine qualities. (Yes, I know about the polygamy things -- we'll pass on that for now.) The true test, to me, is how the people live. In this regard, I cannot fault their lives, their beliefs, or their faith in the Golden Tablets. I just can't.
A co-worker was transferred to Salt Lake City, and while he loved the mountains, he found the social norms very confining. I could see that, and I could understand the pressure upon him to conform. Not fun, but part of the whole social picture there. You take the good with the less-good, in some ways.
I could go on, but I won't. Gary, you had quite a time there!
It's interesting how my perspective on this event has changed over the years. At the time, it was like an outrageous joke. And, there was something very funny and outrageous about brash, young Erik challenging Gary's religion on such a vulnerable point in such a vulgar way in the holiest of holiest places for Mormons.
Yet, over time, and especially as I wrote about this event for this entry, the meaning of it began to change for me. I saw it as less of a joke and more of an event that cautioned us all about taking our religions too literally. The great irony that Erik could swallow a virgin birth and recovery from death in his own religion, but challenge the loss of the golden tablets in Gary's religion, says volumes to me about the dangers in literalism and in organized religion.
Like Bill, I'm a skeptic and believe pretty strongly that any view point that says. "because it's written, it must be so," is not only wrong, it's dangerous.
Literalism among Christians of all stripes is as dangerous as literalism among Islamists. Literalism strips religion of its power of metaphor and myth and mystery and leaves us with doubt, stereotypes, and fear.
It's leads to towers falling and wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.