- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
After reading from the post “if BofM is inspired lie, does value and worth increase?” I started wondering exactly what people think about the Book. I am not asking if you think it is true or not, that has been debated for many years. What I am wondering is if you feel something akin to spirituality, or motivation, or something else when you read it. Does it inspire you or do you find it tedious. So setting aside its truth claims what does it mean to you? I guess for this we could try and assume we had never heard of Mormonism, and we found the book on some old bookshelf someplace. The cover and all the introductory pages are missing that explain where it came from. You start reading I Nephi. How would you feel? Would it be so exciting you could not put it down or would you be more like Mark Twain who said it was chloroform in print. I find it(to me) to both inspire, cringe and become tedious. 1st nephi starts off making me confused and bewildered. But then we have Moroni chapter 7 which I read almost every day and live by particularly versus 45-48 which my whole life is based on. So ya there are parts I find really inspiring and there are others that I just don’t get even when it’s explained to me particularity because I lived under extreme negativity referenced in it, so I don’t find the negative parts helpful but I find the positive stuff oh how to be christ like helpful. Yes, it inspires me – largely due to my youthful experience with it and the fact that I still get interesting insights from it on a regular basis. Of course, I really like to think while I read, and I let my mind go wherever it goes when it starts to go somewhere. The Book of Mormon has prompted quite a few good mental journeys over the years.
For me, it provides a survey course in spiritual history (even if fictitious) which helps me see patterns in socieities. I remember the last time I finished it I had this overwhelming desire to “be good” after seeing how societies that were righteous prospered and those that didn’t descended into bloodshed and some even extinction. There are some really good statements in it, such as “by grace ye are saved after all ye can do”. As well as Mosiah 24 which gives the keys to overcoming trials, which I applied successfully in my early twenties. I found parts of it focusing on humility and faith inspiring, as well as the passage about the natural man in Mosiah Chapter 3 (?). In 4th Nephi, it gives the reasoning of a prophet to God to convince him to abort a drought that was killing the people. If you read it, it gives clues as to the kinds of arguments that can convince God to unleash his miracle power on your behalf — or at least, answer prayers.
I could go on about it, but the 10 times I’ve read it I’ve enjoyed most of it, although parts of it like the allegory of the Olive tree are snoozeville as well as parts of 2 Nephi.
Yes, in many parts but not all. Inspiring to me: King Benjamin’s sermon
- The story of the appearance and ministry of Christ in 3 Nephi
- The stories about the Gaddianton Robbers and how it undermined their society
- The story of commander Moroni rallying the people
- The people of Ammon being hardcore pacifists after repenting of their past violence
- Some of Nephi and Lehi’s visions, I think they are kind of cool and trippy/contemplative (tree of life, etc.)
It really doesn’t matter a whole lot to me if the above stories are perfect journalistic accounts of actual events or not. They are inspiring stories. If they are historical accounts, cool (which I personally doubt). If they are just inspiring stories … they are still inspiring stories to me.
Chloroform in print:
The endless quoting of Isaiah in 2 Nephi zzZZZZZzzZZZzzzZzzzzz…… pretty much all of 2 Nephi. OK Joseph, we get it. You really dig the Old Testament.
- Some of the political and social sections in Alma and Heleman.
- Some of the theological rambling that goes in circles, like the stuff about salvation and original sin that never seems to really answer anything
Cadence wrote:After reading from the post “if BofM is inspired lie, does value and worth increase?”
I started wondering exactly what people think about the Book.I am not asking if you think it is true or not, that has been debated for many years. What I am wondering is if you feel something akin to spirituality, or motivation, or something else when you read it. Does it inspire you or do you find it tedious.So setting aside its truth claims what does it mean to you? I guess for this we could try and assume we had never heard of Mormonism, and we found the book on some old bookshelf someplace. The cover and all the introductory pages are missing that explain where it came from. You start reading I Nephi. How would you feel?Would it be so exciting you could not put it down or would you be more like Mark Twain who said it was chloroform in print. I haven’t read the Book of Mormon from cover-to-cover since I got home from my mission. Personally, I don’t think it’s a terrible book overall; for my money the Old Testament is actually much harder to read and defend as inspired if you want to interpret most of it literally. The most interesting thing about the Book of Mormon to me is that it doesn’t really talk about some of the most distinguishing and central LDS doctrines at this point such as the WoW and temple marriage even though it was supposed to already contain the “fullness of the gospel.”
Personally, I think the Church wants to push toward general acceptance of the BoM by members and investigators not so much due to any special merits of the book itself as much as simply a way to establish the idea that Joseph Smith was a real prophet that restored the “one true church.” This works to some extent through warm fuzzy feelings many members and investigators have about the Church and its doctrines being interpreted as confirmation that it is almost all true and approved by God as well as the fairly common “intellectual testimony” where some people basically speculate about it not making much sense for JS go to all the trouble of making all this up (or to be able to do this on his own) and then defend it all the way to his death so therefore God supposedly must have really been behind it. On the other hand, if people don’t believe the BoM is inspired at all then it hurts the Church’s credibility because of all the fantastic claims they have already made about it.
So that’s why I think the Church exaggerates the relative importance of the BoM mostly as a means to an end (testimony of the restoration) and to try to avoid what will happen in many cases if members don’t believe in the BoM (falling away from the one true path). However, to me how much the BoM is inspired or not doesn’t really matter that much anymore because some of the connections the Church tries to make between the truthfulness of the BoM and what this supposedly means do not necessarily exist. For example, even if the BoM was inspired and JS was a legitimate prophet almost exactly the way the Church claims that still wouldn’t necessarily mean that everything JS did was inspired much less that Brigham Young and all the other LDS prophets and apostles up to this point were inspired for most of the major things they have said and done so far.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:The most interesting thing about the Book of Mormon to me is that it doesn’t really talk about some of the most distinguishing and central LDS doctrines at this point such as the WoW and temple marriage even though it was supposed to already contain the “fullness of the gospel.”
That is always an interesting realization, when people make it.
Perhaps the BoM really does contain the fullness of the gospel … just that happens to be a very short list of profoundly simple concepts: faith, repentance, baptism and receiving the gift of the holy ghost.
The rest is all speculative fluff, just like we have today but different. Same fluff, different day.
It provides me with some teachings and stories that I share with my kids. Recently we read how Christ appeared to the Nephites/Lamanites and one of the first things He talked about was contention is of the devil. We talked as a family about how we can try to avoid contention in the home with how we talk to each other. Things like that allow me to use something to teach my children, something they respect and think about. Even my 9 year old likes the stories.
When I use it these ways, it is inspiring to me.
Brian Johnston wrote:DevilsAdvocate wrote:The most interesting thing about the Book of Mormon to me is that it doesn’t really talk about some of the most distinguishing and central LDS doctrines at this point such as the WoW and temple marriage even though it was supposed to already contain the “fullness of the gospel.”
That is always an interesting realization, when people make it.
Perhaps the BoM really does contain the fullness of the gospel … just that happens to be a very short list of profoundly simple concepts: faith, repentance, baptism and receiving the gift of the holy ghost.
The rest is all speculative fluff, just like we have today but different. Same fluff, different day.
Yes!!! What DA said above. I think Joseph Smith wrote/translated it thinking it was the final word and then realized the need for ongoing revelation to keep his role as prophet clear, as well as the need for greater motivation for the saints to be committed. So, the teachings evolved from the Frist Principles and Ordinances of the Gospel to all the extra temple stuff, as well as the D&C which introduced additional doctrine.
In the PBS.org special on the Mormons, one historian said the BoM reads like a compendium of 19th century religious thought — clarifying all of the debated religious issues of the day such as grace versus works, the need for infant baptism or not, the correct manner of baptism etcetera. I wonder if JS wrote/translated the BoM and then realized he needed more to keep his church growing, committed and fed.
I hate to say it, but not really. I can name at least a dozen other books that I get way more inspiration from. doug wrote:I hate to say it, but not really. I can name at least a dozen other books that I get way more inspiration from.
How does it compare to the New Testament for you? I am reading the NT now and still find myself cross-referencing scriptures including the BoM.Some of it does, there is some really good stuff in there. It is also the #1 factor in me believing that JS was a good guy. If it weren’t for the fact that he somehow produced the BoM (not knowing exactly how) I think I could totally dismiss his other contributions, but he really had something there.
Unfortunately, I have never found the BofM to be inspiring, mostly because the book has not been able to answer my questions or solve my problems. It seemed to have a lot of solutions for people who had different problems than me: all of the “repent of your whoredoms, and your lasciviousness, and your strife, and your envyings, and your covetings, and you adulteries, etc.” would be helpful for people who had those problems, but is not helpful for me. My problems have been more social- I was socially ostracized (or just ignored) during significant portions of my life, and the girls that I liked weren’t interested in me, and since the BofM doesn’t have answers for those kinds of problems, I have never found it very useful. I also don’t find much of what could be called spirituality in the book. The book chronicles a God who has a highly responsive interactive relationship with his people, and who is very responsive to prayer, and who and gives specific blessings for specific actions; I have tried to create this kind of relationship with God and have found God unresponsive, so I do not find these kinds of stories inspiring. Much of the BofM also has something of a “gloom and doom” tone to it, which I don’t like. I find it inspires me. There are embarrassing and difficult parts, but certainly much less so than much of the bible. I’m inspired by the following:
1. That the Book of Mormon was necessary to provide a pseudopigraphal legitimacy to the church as well as to open canon. Without the Book of Mormon’s existence, the church would not really have survived, imo.
2. That the Book of Mormon contains a set of relatively interesting stories to use as a common framework for gospel discussion. Their familiarity allows us to communicate key principles in a shorthand around the lessons in the accounts.
3. That the Book of Mormon is painfully not literal history, and therefore there is no capability to provide alternative historical context about what the book says. All we have is what the book says, forcing us to focus on the message and not the interpretation.
4. There are numerous speeches that provide extraordinarily clear content of the gospel: Benjamin’s speech, Alma’s speeches, 3rd NE 11. etc.
5. By declaring that the book of mormon is the ‘fulness’, it forces us to keep the gospel simple and not complicate it with the various embarrassing appendages and innovations of some of the prophets.
there’s a lot more, but that’s just my take.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.