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The lesson today was Helaman 1-5. We read the chapter headings to get a feel for the history and what was happening in the chapters, then we focused on three things that are core themes in the chapters: contention, pride and repentance. 1) We talked about organizational vs. inter-personal contention – how the type of contention mentioned in these chapters started out as governmental contention and then shifted in the later chapters to intra-church, inter-personal contention. We defined “contention” (division, condemnation, active and emotional fighting and condescending argument, etc.) – and we talked about what contention is not (disagreement, difference, debate, etc.).
2) We then talked about pride – again, what it is (comparative assumption of individual worth, placing one’s self above others in the sight of God, looking down on others simply because they are different, etc.) and what it isn’t (feeling good about yourself, recognition of individual abilities, simply realizing you are better at something than someone else is, etc.). We talked explicitly about how easy it is for pride to creep into the Church – and we discussed how that happens at the ward level. I gave some examples of how it might occur by focusing on different people who might walk into our Sacrament Meeting and how we might react to them. (someone in dirty jeans and a sweaty, tobacco-stained t-shirt; a drunk carrying a bottle of whiskey and reeking of alcohol; a young woman in a mini-skirt and tank top with a very visible tattoo; two men holding hands who sit down and kiss each other) I stressed that pride isn’t primarily about what things we teach (that we still can teach standards and not be prideful) – that it’s largely about how we react to and judge others who don’t live the standards we teach or are different in some other way. I asked who is closer to God: me, standing there teaching the class, or a drunk guy passed out on the sidewalk in the city nearby. We talked about why their initial, reflexive answer was wrong. We ended this part by talking about how we just don’t know the circumstances that led to that man being passed out on the sidewalk and that he might be living what he knows and understands better than I am living what I know and understand.
3) We finished by talking about “laying hold upon the word of God” and the nature of repentance – both reactive (feeling bad about what we’ve done and trying to stop) and proactive (trying to develop godly characteristics that can help us become people who won’t do those things). We defined repentance (“change”) and read the Bible Dictionary definition that frames it in terms of a “change of mind” – not just a change in actions. I used the example of a parent who screams at the kids and described efforts to repent reactively (feel bad and commit to never do it again – and how that rarely works) and proactively (working on humility, meekness, patience, etc.). I talked about suppression vs. replacement and ended by telling them that I believe in BOTH types of repentance – but that we tend to focus too much on reactive repentance and not enough on proactive repentance. I explained again that true repentance isn’t achieved by just doing things differently (although that is an important part) but rather by seeing things differently.
We will talk more specifically in a later lesson about repentance relative to the Atonement, grace, faith and works (when we get into the later chapters in 3rd Nephi).
The lesson today was on Helaman 6-12. We talked more about pride, a little about perspective and analyzed some specific verses throughout the chapters. I’m going to recap the discussions about pride and perspective: I started by emphasizing again that we tend to focus on the obvious, “big” examples of pride and forget too often how easy it is to let the “little” instances go unrecognized and unaddressed in our own lives. I shared the following example from the Sacrament Meeting that had ended a few minutes before the class started.
The final speaker talked about pride, and it was an excellent talk. However, he also went over the regular time by about 10 minutes. The point I made to the class was that as he got closer and closer to the standard end time for SM, I started getting antsy and thinking, “Come on, Bro. _______. Wrap it up; it’s time to end.” It hit me strongly as I was thinking that thought that there is no mandated time length for SM – that we have a generalized schedule but that the Bishop can let it run as short or as long as he wants any given week. What I was doing as I sat there was putting myself in the position of the Bishop by thinking a speaker needed to end when I was accustomed to the meeting ending – which, in a way, is an example of “little” pride. I wanted what I was used to, not what was best for the entire congregation – and having him finish his excellent talk probably was best for the congregation as a whole.
We then talked a bit more about the nature of pride, its opposite – which I think is charity (since pride separates people into “levels” (like on a ladder, which is why I don’t like that image of progression, while charity sees everyone as on the same level but just at different points along the journey’s road), and its antidote – which I think is humility.
We read Nephi’s lamentation in chapter 7 about wishing he’d been alive back in the days of the original Nephi – when everything was easy and the people were so receptive to the preaching of their leaders, and I asked them what they thought Nephi would have thought about that version of history. We all agreed he would have said something like, “Are you kidding me, dude?” We talked about pining for “back in the day” and how that is a good example of reverse pride, if you will – devaluing your own blessings by comparing them to your unrealistic, incorrect view of others’ blessings. I didn’t say it explicitly, but I wanted them to understand again that the scriptures are written by people from their perspectives – and that even great prophets like Nephi (who was given the sealing power) could write some really silly things when analyzed objectively.
We finished by talking about why Nephi was given the sealing power – that he did what he believed God was asking him to do, but that, more importantly, he lacked any trace of pride and only would ask for things that matched God’s will. I pointed out that strict obedience to communal rules and regulations wasn’t mentioned directly anywhere in that story – that what was stated was that he lived passionately according to the dictates of his own conscience, did what he believed God was telling him to do personally and was humble enough to want only what he believed God wanted.
Curt, I appreciated you taking the time to share your lessons with us. I have looked forward to reading them each week. The kids are lucky to have you. I can tell you put a lot of time and effort into each lesson. I have found that now that my testimony is not the same it takes me so much longer to do my HC talks every month. I can spent up to 10 hours or more on a talk because I have to get the wording just right to fit the needs of the congregation and still be true to myself. My last talk was about the BOM and I had a great deal of compliments afterwards but I never said I knew it was true but did say how it did make a big difference in my life and it really has. I have never been one who quotes other people when giving talks and now that I don’t accept every thing to be as we read in the scriptures and history, it does make it much more challenging to share an assigned lesson or topic while still feeling good about what we say.
I was traveling with my job and had Ward and General Conference since the last time I posted about my Sunday School lesson, so it’s been a while. The following is an outline of what we discussed last week: 1) We talked about repentance as a general concept (meaning nothing more than a change) and about the concept of “repent and turn unto me”. We talked about the difference between simple self-help change (or even destructive change) and change that is focused on becoming more godly / Christ-like – but I stressed how important self-help change is, as well. We talked about Pres. Benson’s statement:
Quote:True repentance involves a change of heart and not just a change of behavior.
2) We talked about the following from Samuel, the Lamanite, and what it says about the nature of the judgment:
Quote:If people are condemned, they bring upon themselves their own condemnation. (Helaman 14:29)
3) We talked about the power of actually seeing things and the power of feeling things – and why it’s easy for people to rationalize away and dismiss either type of experience.
4) We talked about opposition, and I stressed that even the most faithful, righteous people will face trials, problems and opposition in their lives – and that we can’t judge anyone in any way based on how their life appears to us.
5) We talked about the Nephites banding together against the Gaddianton robbers, and we had a fairly long discussion about when it is appropriate to “band together” in our own time and, just as importantly, when it is not appropriate to do that. I referenced our previous lesson about the danger of war rhetoric when no actual attacks are being made and talked about the call to gather in the early days of the Church compared to the call NOT to “gather to Zion” now.
This week, we covered 3 Nephi 8-11: 1) We talked about modern examples of “total darkness” over extended periods of time – especially immediately following the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and when the Icelandic volcano erupted a few years ago. I mentioned that “three days” might mean 72 hours, but that it also might mean from before sundown on one day, throughout the next day and past sunrise on the third day. I told them that I don’t care how long a period it was, but that I like to think about all the options as I read the scriptures and remind myself that some things aren’t as obvious and easy as they seem with only a casual reading – and that, sometimes, even our commonly held assumptions can be wrong.
2) We talked about what it means for the Law of Moses to be “fulfilled in Christ” – especially since we didn’t reject the Ten Commandments even after his resurrection. We talked about what “sacrifice” meant in the OT / LofM culture and what it means to have a “broken heart and a contrite spirit”. We talked about the opposite of a broken heart being one that is too hard to be broken without being destroyed – and I used the example of creating pottery. We talked about God wanting to be able to shape us into what he wants us to become and that we can keep that from happening if we close and harden our hearts – keeping him from “breaking” and reconfiguring us.
3) We talked about the difference between hearing sounds / words and being willing to “open our ears to hear”. I described how I envision the scene in Chapter 11 – people gathered around buzzing about what had happened environmentally and the message they had heard from heaven three days earlier. I picture them continuing to talk among themselves the first couple of times they hear the new voice / sound and then suddenly being still and actually focusing on the sound and looking toward heaven – finally concentrating on it.
4) We talked about verse 7 and what it means that Jesus “glorified my name”. We talked about what “glorify” means, what constitutes God’s glory and how the Atonement makes that glory active among us.
5) We talked about the difference between “disputations” and “disagreements” – and we talked about how Jesus defined “my gospel” in Chapter 11. I stressed that faith, repentance, baptism (by water and by fire) and enduring to the end are the core of the gospel and that we shouldn’t “add unto it” – that everything else is changeable based on the understanding of the time and subject to further light and knowledge. I mentioned specifically that commandments, dietary codes, counsel, cultural customs and even details of the temple endowment have changed over time, but the things we need to hold to and not change are those core concepts of the gospel.
I will be traveling in Utah next week, so I won’t have another lesson summary until the week after that.
With my work travel and some facilities issues at our church building, it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve taught my Sunday School class. I’m combining a few lessons to try to focus enough time on some lessons I want to stress in the next few weeks, so we went over 3 Nephi 22 – 4 Nephi today. The following is the outline of the lesson:
1) I asked the students what parts of our scriptures are the hardest for them to understand, generally. They said Isaiah, Revelations and the “boring” books in the early Old Testament. One young man said 2 Nephi, but I’m certain that was in reference to the Isaiah chapters. We read briefly the first few verses in 3 Nephi 23, and I simply told them that I absolutely
LOVEIsaiah – but that they will have to dig into the culture, symbolism and writing style of that time if they really want to understand it better. There are some good study helps inside and outside the Church, but they have to understand the bigger picture if they want to be sure they understand the details. 2) We read 3 Nephi 26:9 and talked about understanding and living what we have before demanding more. I mentioned that this applies to every aspect of life in some way and to some extent, not just the scriptural application of that verse.
3) We spent almost all of the rest of the time in 3 Nehpi 27 – talking about: a) the meaning of “my gospel” and how central it is to understand what it means to say, “
I came into the world to do the will of my Father.” (verse 13) We talked about verse 21 and how often people spend so much time talking about what life will be like after they die that they forget to do in THIS life what Jesus did in his life. 3a) We read verse 16 and talked about how enduring to the end in that verse appears to mean continuing to strive to change (repent) and ‘be” throughout our lives. I told them that I was moving into “Ray’s speculation territory” when I explained how I see one of the phrases in that verse, “
him will I hold guiltless before my Father” – since I like the image of Jesus wrapping his arms around each person and “holding” her guiltless. 3b) When we read verse 21, I focused on “
The works which you have seen me do, that shall ye also do.” I stressed how I don’t like the question, “ What would Jesus do?” Rather, I like, “ What did Jesus do?” I told them that anyone can rationalize whatever they want to do based on what they think Jesus would do, but that it’s much, much harder to justify lots of things we do if we step back and try to see what Jesus actually did in similar situations. I told them quite frankly that I’ve been troubled for the past couple of years by how little my actual life resembles his actual life – that, although I understand the limitations of my family situation, I am trying to figure out how to serve people more actively and associate with “God’s kingdom of nobodies”, as a friend once wrote in a blog post. 3c) As a continuation of that conversation, we read verse 27: “
What manner of men ought ye to be? . . . even as I am.” We talked about doing the best we can do emulate him, but I also told them that I think one of the worst aspects of the Great Apostasy was the focus so much on Jesus, the God, that Jesus, the man, figuratively was killed by many people. I told them that if we want to be the type of men and women that Jesus was, we need to know what kind of MAN he was – and we need to accept the fact that he really was, in a very real and powerful way, a MAN and not “just” a god in mortality. 4) We talked about 4 Nephi, and I stressed the difference between the peace for generations and what led to its loss. We talked about the re-establishment of “-ites” – and I mentioned that these “ites” were NOT racial / ethnic at that point. Rather, they were religious designations. We talked about how easy it is for young people their ages to understand the need to overcome racial prejudices in our modern, American society, but I told them that it can be harder to see other people and fight the tendency to keep them separated from us (that divides us into “ites”) because of their religious affiliation. I told them that if we allow ourselves to see those of other religions as different enough that we won’t associate with them, we are falling into the same trap that destroyed the peace of that time.
Have you seen of the material for the coming year? We have a meeting at the end of the month to introduce it to the stake and wars leaders. It looks like it is going to be a big push and for sure it will challenge the teachers to do more prep. At the same time I think it will open up so some of the difficult issues facing the church to the youth and eventually to the general population. We will have to see where this goes. I love what I have heard about the new curriculum. Old Timer wrote:This week, we covered 3 Nephi 8-11:
… buzzing about what had happened environmentally and the message they had heard from heaven three days earlier.
One little asside (I’ve enjoyed reading your lesson summaries by the way and appreciate your contexts and applications):
Christ’s appearance at the temple might have been about a year after the 3 days of darkness events.
3 Nep 8:5 “And it came to pass in the thirty and fourth year, in the first month, on the fourth day of the month, there arose a great storm, such an one as never had been known in all the land.”
So the carnage starts to happen on the 4th ‘January’ (whatever their first month was called).
6-19 is the 3 hours of earthquakes.
8:20-10:8 is the voice of the Lord crying repentance in the darkness.
Then 10:9 “…the three days pass away. And it was in the morning, and the darkness dispersed from off the face of the land, and the earth did cease to tremble, and the rocks did cease to rend, and the dreadful groanings did cease, and all the tumultuous noises did pass away.”
10:10-17 The righteous are spared and celebrate/give thanks. The earth heals and life goes on.
Then in 10:18 Mormon says:
“And it came to pass that in the ending of the thirty and fourth year, behold, I will show unto you that the people of Nephi who were spared, and also those who had been called Lamanites, who had been spared, did have great favors shown unto them, and great blessings poured out upon their heads, insomuch that soon after the ascension of Christ into heaven he did truly manifest himself unto them-
19 Showing his body unto them, and ministering unto them; and an account of his ministry shall be given hereafter. Therefore for this time I make an end of my sayings.”
I have read the Book of Mormon many times. I had never noticed v.18 until someone mentioned it in SS this year.
So the earthquakes happened in the first month of the 34th year and Mormon says he’ll tell us about what happened at the ending of the 34th year when Christ manifested himself to them.
Chapter 11 starts with people marvelling at the great change that had taken place (but the change is after the earth has been healed in chap 10)
Anyway… Not in any way trying to correct you, and some people don’t accept the suggested timings, but I think it’s pretty cool. First that it reminds me there are little hidden gems in the BoM that I’m yet to discover, having gone my whole life missing this one, and second a reminder that even Joseph seemed unaware of some of the intricacies and subtexts in the book.
It’s a long way off proof, and I continue to harbour other reservations. But it’s interesting.
Please keep sharing
I actually like and accept that reading, but, honestly, I had forgotten completely about it. I will try to remember to share it at the beginning of the lesson next week.
When it came up someone also mentioned something cool about how if it really was a gathering at temple at the actual “ending” of the 34th year (i.e. their new year’s eve), then there are some interesting parallels to meso-american evidence of ‘new year’ ceremonies held at their temples/pyramids. I didn’t get a reference but will have a look. I’m not sure whether you step into the arena of the archaeologists and apologists, so maybe that’s not what you’re looking for.
For this class (teenagers), I generally stay away from anything that can’t be read into the actual words themselves. It’s not that I have a problem with doing that, but there’s so little time to cover so much that I always run out of time even sticking with just the words in the book itself. mackay11, I think your mention of that verse was inspired. My oldest daughter should be getting her mission call tomorrow or Friday, and she called me tonight to ask about the timing of Jesus’ post-resurrection visit to the disciples in Jerusalem and to the people in the Book of Mormon. She first asked if I thought the “40 days” in the Old World was literal or numerical to mean “many” (see, I really do share this stuff with my kids), and then she asked if I thought Jesus had visited the Nephites before, at the same as or after he spent so much time with the original disciples. I share the sequence you mentioned, and she thought it was really cool that it was laid out that way in the Book of Mormon.
Anyway, thanks for bringing it back to my memory. It was perfect timing. Coincidence? Sure, it might have been – but I intentionally choose to believe it was inspiration.
Old Timer wrote:mackay11, I think your mention of that verse was inspired.
My oldest daughter should be getting her mission call tomorrow or Friday, and she called me tonight to ask about the timing of Jesus’ post-resurrection visit to the disciples in Jerusalem and to the people in the Book of Mormon. She first asked if I thought the “40 days” in the Old World was literal or numerical to mean “many” (see, I really do share this stuff with my kids), and then she asked if I thought Jesus had visited the Nephites before, at the same as or after he spent so much time with the original disciples. I share the sequence you mentioned, and she thought it was really cool that it was laid out that way in the Book of Mormon.
Anyway, thanks for bringing it back to my memory. It was perfect timing. Coincidence? Sure, it might have been – but I intentionally choose to believe it was inspiration.
My pleasure
My mum has always said:
“A coincidence is a series of minor miracles where God chooses to remain anonymous.”
I’m not sure it’s always the case, but I like the sentiment.
I consider God to be less a pilot of my soul and more an air traffic controller. We guide our own planes and are responsible for our own safety and direction, but He may sometimes nudges, through suggestion, other planes into and out of our flight path as each of us fly, swervingly and sometimes judderingly, towards an uncertain, but hoped for destination.
Old Timer wrote:For this class (teenagers), I generally stay away from anything that can’t be read into the actual words themselves. It’s not that I have a problem with doing that, but there’s so little time to cover so much that I always run out of time even sticking with just the words in the book itself.
I enjoy your posts Curt, because you speak a lot of good sense. On reflection, I’d say you’re doing exactly the right thing.
I love the Book of Mormon first for the words within it. I have a testimony based on trying to live the suggestions/instructions and based on the positive feelings I have when I regularly read it.
I’ve realised the problem with an in-depth study of its historicity is that for every evidence “for” there is another “against.”
As I’ve studied the historicity, I find myself certain I’m reading actual history one day and then convinced it’s fabricated fiction the next day.
But amongst all that, I remain sure the words ‘work,’ whatever their source.
In many ways, you are doing them a great service by helping them trust in the words rather than the ‘interesting parallels’ which often leads to the discovery of ‘confusing contradictions.’ It’s hard to open one box without the other needing attention too.
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