1 Nephi 19:1-10
19:1-5 - Nephi talks about making 2 sets of plates and apparently I had never paid attention enough to notice that he says here that he made the larger plates and kept that record for quite some time before he was commanded to make the smaller plates and to keep "the more sacred things" on them. I wonder why the wait between the two separate plates?
19:6 - Nephi is a really interesting character to me because he some of the things that he says, in the context of our society he sounds quite arrogant, like when he talks about being the leader of the people over his brothers or his ministry, I don't know, I think it's just the way of reading words, you don't have the intonation for context, etc. Then as I've learned through this blog, he's done things and acted in certain ways that show his great level of humility. Here in verse 6 he says "I do not write anything upon plates save it be that I think it be sacred" he doesn't say that it IS sacred, only that he thinks it is, so he's down playing his ability to judge the worth of somethings. He continues with basically saying "now, if I make a mistake, the prophets before more have made mistakes in their records too, that's not an excuse for me, but please bear with me because I'm not perfect." The way Nephi writes and from what I can gather about his thought process, he's very unique, unlike anyone else in the Book of Mormon, I believe. He has a distinct personality and I wonder if that's just how he was born, or if because he came from Jerusalem, that was normal for them, then as the plates got passed down, the culture had changed so that Nephi stands out in his wording and phraseology because he was raised in a different culture. Whenever someone says "well Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon" I want to laugh and say "really? Have you ever read it? Have you ever noticed that each individual writer has their own speech patterns, their own phrases and words they use over and over again? Have you ever compared the writing styles of all the different authors and then compared them to the individual work of Joseph Smith? No? Oh ok then, don't say stupid stuff." Nephi stands out as a prime example of the differences in authorship, by shear comparison. You could take out all the names, all the writers and still be able to tell that there are several different people who write in the Book of Mormon. One day I would like to write a book comparing the different writing styles of all the different Book of Mormon authors. I think it would be interesting, I'm probably the only one though. Hahaha.
19:7-8 - Many, many times I have "set (the Lord) at naught." So many instances in my life I have done the whole "I know what I'm doing, leave me alone" thing, and suffered greatly because of it. In the Institute manual Elder Neal A. Maxwell says "For many moderns... the query 'what think ye of Christ" would be answered 'I really don't think of Him at all!" This is going to be terrible, but again, it's true, even though I was raised in the LDS church, I never really knew Jesus, and to be honest, I am just barely learning and growing toward Him, and oddly enough, it's while I'm trying to teach my kids. I want them to love Jesus, I want them to trust Him, and I want them to feel peace and love and kindness. But I'm running my hardest to just keep ahead of them spiritually. I believe that one of the tactics used by Satan to distract us from keeping the commandments is to get us to think of Christ as this abstract concept, this person or idea that doesn't make sense. That has at least been my experience. We are so busy in our daily lives, so preoccupied that the thought of religion has to be actively brought into our lives. It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Yes, most of us on the internet have the resources to be graduated to the top tier of self-actualization, we are usually stuck turning on the wheel of the first 3 tears. I know that as a single mom, I get hardly any sleep and I work a lot and I'm constantly feeding kids, so I'm churching down there at the bottom most of the time. So it takes active participation on my part to get up to where I'm functioning at the higher levels. But I loved what Elder Maxwell continued with "it matters very little what people think of us, but it matters very much what we think of Him. It matters very little, too, who others say we are; what matters is who we say Jesus is," and I would like to add that it doesn't matter what others think about us, the only thing that matters is what Jesus thinks of us. I know that he loves everyone, but I'm trying to teach my kids to listen to their hearts, to be aware of how they feel, if they feel the Holy Ghost, I try to help them see that, and if they act naughty, I try to get them to understand the feeling of the loss of the Holy Ghost. If you pay attention and truly listen, you know if you are on the right track, you know if you have strayed, you know if the Lord is pleased with your progress and how your life is going. I'm trying to get them to recognize that in their daily lives. So if everyone else thinks you're stupid, but Jesus is proud of you, are you happy inside or sad inside? If choosing the right means you're not popular, what should you do? It makes me so happy when they say "choose the right." My son, I don't know if it because he's younger or if he's just naturally more rebellious, but the wants to argue the point "but mom what is (some random scenario that will never happen) then what?" So we're working on that.
19:9 - One thing I absolutely loved learning about in Jesus the Christ was the fact that Jesus suffered all and at any moment could have stopped everything, the only reason all the bad stuff happened to him was because he allowed it. He could not die until he chose to, he had power to command all the elements at once, but he didn't. Everything he endured was by choice and for a reason. It was difficult to me because I don't understand much about the atonement, and I have a lot of questions about it, like I'm sure most people do, but I thought that there was someone in this life who understood all of it, and that if I studied enough I would be able to understand it too, but thankfully, now that I'm actually listening to the leaders of the church, it didn't take long for me to hear something along the lines of "we can't understand everything about the atonement in this life," then I realized, some might know more than others, but no one understands it fully, no one understands it the way that I wanted to or the way that I thought they did. That was a huge relief to me. It's always been this abstract concept for me. Then in the Institute manual it asks us to "look for evidence of the Lord's great love for His children." I know I've talked about this before, but I don't really understand the whole "God loves his children" thing. Why? Why does he love people? Why does he love child molesters and war criminals? People are drama, people are disappointing, people can disregard all that they have been blessed with and run wild doing all types of crazy things. Then I think, "well, God loves his children, probably in the way that you love yours. He made his children for the same purpose, so why did you have kids?" And I don't know. I mean I know that I wanted kids, I knew that I love kids, and that I would be a decent mother, but I can't put into words at this moment why I wanted to have children. Life would be lonely without kids, family provides fulfillment and joy immeasurable. It's all on a deeply spiritual and emotional level. I guess I just never thought that I would be doing it alone at this stage in my life. I never thought that I would endure my children's heartbreak as their dad walks away. But I guess that's the difference between me and God. When I had kids I didn't know the future, I didn't know I would be single, I didn't know that I would be physically supporting a family alone, I didn't know that I was going to be so tired that I want to cry pretty much every few minutes, but even if I knew that way back when I would still have had my kids. Why? I don't know, because I love them. God knew everything when he had us, and he has power to protect and reward us throughout the eternities. We don't know everything in this life, so it's not really fair for me to judge God's motives for having children. I think that maybe I do that because somehow for some reason I'm afraid that it's too good to be true. Maybe I feel unlovable, no one could ever love me, I'm not worth it, there's nothing I could ever do to be worth the effort. Maybe I feel that what I've done has been so bad that no one, especially God, would ever want me back. I'm afraid that I'm not worth the effort, I've been hurt so badly my whole life that I guess I've learned to discount or second guess any relationship that would break my heart if it ended. Yeah that's what this is. I'm afraid to spend so much time and effort in building a relationship with God and totally exposing myself and my heart to him and his refining powers but in the end still not being good enough. Sad. Logically that doesn't even make sense but emotionally that's true for me. Wow, I've made so much progress with people and feeling just as worthwhile as they are, just as important, but when it comes to God, I still feel so unworthy, both because of what I've done but also just because of who I inherently am.
I follow a group on Facebook called the Arbinger Institute and they had a message up the other day that really spoke to me on the level that I am right now "Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Cynics don't learn anything... cynicism is a self-imposed blindess, a rejection of the world (Steven Colbert." Then someone commented on it saying "cynicism leaves no room for love. A rejection of the world, may not be so bad but a rejection of love as an answer to many problems - that is a problem." And isn't that what we are talking about here? I'm a cynic, I have a negative attitude about life and my own self worth as a form of protection from what I perceive as emotional threats. By believing that unconditional love from God is "too good to be true" I'm actively rejecting the love of God himself. He's trying to love me, arms stretched out, begging me to trust him and be comforted, and I won't do it. I won't come inside the house and eat because I'm afraid he's going to tell me I'm bad, so instead I just stand out in the rain. I won't even take a chance. I guess as I'm trying hard to grow spiritually, I'm at least standing on the porch now, it's taken awhile and at this rate I'll be 80 years old before I ring the door bell, and you know what, at that point he'll still answer the door and be so happy I'm finally coming inside, but I could have been inside eating, having fun, playing games, this whole time but I didn't because I was scared. Interesting. I honestly thought that tonight's blog was going to be boring, but I've had a lot of self discovery tonight.
19:10 - Here Nephi connects the ancient God of Israel to the man who will be born a baby and crucified as Jesus. Here's an interesting question. Crucifixion was invented by the Romans many years after Lehi left Jerusalem, how would Nephi had known what crucifixion was? He says that it was according to the words of "Neum," it must have been something taught in the ancient scripture that Nephi had access to but that hadn't really been searched diligently before.
19:6 - Nephi is a really interesting character to me because he some of the things that he says, in the context of our society he sounds quite arrogant, like when he talks about being the leader of the people over his brothers or his ministry, I don't know, I think it's just the way of reading words, you don't have the intonation for context, etc. Then as I've learned through this blog, he's done things and acted in certain ways that show his great level of humility. Here in verse 6 he says "I do not write anything upon plates save it be that I think it be sacred" he doesn't say that it IS sacred, only that he thinks it is, so he's down playing his ability to judge the worth of somethings. He continues with basically saying "now, if I make a mistake, the prophets before more have made mistakes in their records too, that's not an excuse for me, but please bear with me because I'm not perfect." The way Nephi writes and from what I can gather about his thought process, he's very unique, unlike anyone else in the Book of Mormon, I believe. He has a distinct personality and I wonder if that's just how he was born, or if because he came from Jerusalem, that was normal for them, then as the plates got passed down, the culture had changed so that Nephi stands out in his wording and phraseology because he was raised in a different culture. Whenever someone says "well Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon" I want to laugh and say "really? Have you ever read it? Have you ever noticed that each individual writer has their own speech patterns, their own phrases and words they use over and over again? Have you ever compared the writing styles of all the different authors and then compared them to the individual work of Joseph Smith? No? Oh ok then, don't say stupid stuff." Nephi stands out as a prime example of the differences in authorship, by shear comparison. You could take out all the names, all the writers and still be able to tell that there are several different people who write in the Book of Mormon. One day I would like to write a book comparing the different writing styles of all the different Book of Mormon authors. I think it would be interesting, I'm probably the only one though. Hahaha.
19:7-8 - Many, many times I have "set (the Lord) at naught." So many instances in my life I have done the whole "I know what I'm doing, leave me alone" thing, and suffered greatly because of it. In the Institute manual Elder Neal A. Maxwell says "For many moderns... the query 'what think ye of Christ" would be answered 'I really don't think of Him at all!" This is going to be terrible, but again, it's true, even though I was raised in the LDS church, I never really knew Jesus, and to be honest, I am just barely learning and growing toward Him, and oddly enough, it's while I'm trying to teach my kids. I want them to love Jesus, I want them to trust Him, and I want them to feel peace and love and kindness. But I'm running my hardest to just keep ahead of them spiritually. I believe that one of the tactics used by Satan to distract us from keeping the commandments is to get us to think of Christ as this abstract concept, this person or idea that doesn't make sense. That has at least been my experience. We are so busy in our daily lives, so preoccupied that the thought of religion has to be actively brought into our lives. It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Yes, most of us on the internet have the resources to be graduated to the top tier of self-actualization, we are usually stuck turning on the wheel of the first 3 tears. I know that as a single mom, I get hardly any sleep and I work a lot and I'm constantly feeding kids, so I'm churching down there at the bottom most of the time. So it takes active participation on my part to get up to where I'm functioning at the higher levels. But I loved what Elder Maxwell continued with "it matters very little what people think of us, but it matters very much what we think of Him. It matters very little, too, who others say we are; what matters is who we say Jesus is," and I would like to add that it doesn't matter what others think about us, the only thing that matters is what Jesus thinks of us. I know that he loves everyone, but I'm trying to teach my kids to listen to their hearts, to be aware of how they feel, if they feel the Holy Ghost, I try to help them see that, and if they act naughty, I try to get them to understand the feeling of the loss of the Holy Ghost. If you pay attention and truly listen, you know if you are on the right track, you know if you have strayed, you know if the Lord is pleased with your progress and how your life is going. I'm trying to get them to recognize that in their daily lives. So if everyone else thinks you're stupid, but Jesus is proud of you, are you happy inside or sad inside? If choosing the right means you're not popular, what should you do? It makes me so happy when they say "choose the right." My son, I don't know if it because he's younger or if he's just naturally more rebellious, but the wants to argue the point "but mom what is (some random scenario that will never happen) then what?" So we're working on that.
19:9 - One thing I absolutely loved learning about in Jesus the Christ was the fact that Jesus suffered all and at any moment could have stopped everything, the only reason all the bad stuff happened to him was because he allowed it. He could not die until he chose to, he had power to command all the elements at once, but he didn't. Everything he endured was by choice and for a reason. It was difficult to me because I don't understand much about the atonement, and I have a lot of questions about it, like I'm sure most people do, but I thought that there was someone in this life who understood all of it, and that if I studied enough I would be able to understand it too, but thankfully, now that I'm actually listening to the leaders of the church, it didn't take long for me to hear something along the lines of "we can't understand everything about the atonement in this life," then I realized, some might know more than others, but no one understands it fully, no one understands it the way that I wanted to or the way that I thought they did. That was a huge relief to me. It's always been this abstract concept for me. Then in the Institute manual it asks us to "look for evidence of the Lord's great love for His children." I know I've talked about this before, but I don't really understand the whole "God loves his children" thing. Why? Why does he love people? Why does he love child molesters and war criminals? People are drama, people are disappointing, people can disregard all that they have been blessed with and run wild doing all types of crazy things. Then I think, "well, God loves his children, probably in the way that you love yours. He made his children for the same purpose, so why did you have kids?" And I don't know. I mean I know that I wanted kids, I knew that I love kids, and that I would be a decent mother, but I can't put into words at this moment why I wanted to have children. Life would be lonely without kids, family provides fulfillment and joy immeasurable. It's all on a deeply spiritual and emotional level. I guess I just never thought that I would be doing it alone at this stage in my life. I never thought that I would endure my children's heartbreak as their dad walks away. But I guess that's the difference between me and God. When I had kids I didn't know the future, I didn't know I would be single, I didn't know that I would be physically supporting a family alone, I didn't know that I was going to be so tired that I want to cry pretty much every few minutes, but even if I knew that way back when I would still have had my kids. Why? I don't know, because I love them. God knew everything when he had us, and he has power to protect and reward us throughout the eternities. We don't know everything in this life, so it's not really fair for me to judge God's motives for having children. I think that maybe I do that because somehow for some reason I'm afraid that it's too good to be true. Maybe I feel unlovable, no one could ever love me, I'm not worth it, there's nothing I could ever do to be worth the effort. Maybe I feel that what I've done has been so bad that no one, especially God, would ever want me back. I'm afraid that I'm not worth the effort, I've been hurt so badly my whole life that I guess I've learned to discount or second guess any relationship that would break my heart if it ended. Yeah that's what this is. I'm afraid to spend so much time and effort in building a relationship with God and totally exposing myself and my heart to him and his refining powers but in the end still not being good enough. Sad. Logically that doesn't even make sense but emotionally that's true for me. Wow, I've made so much progress with people and feeling just as worthwhile as they are, just as important, but when it comes to God, I still feel so unworthy, both because of what I've done but also just because of who I inherently am.
I follow a group on Facebook called the Arbinger Institute and they had a message up the other day that really spoke to me on the level that I am right now "Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Cynics don't learn anything... cynicism is a self-imposed blindess, a rejection of the world (Steven Colbert." Then someone commented on it saying "cynicism leaves no room for love. A rejection of the world, may not be so bad but a rejection of love as an answer to many problems - that is a problem." And isn't that what we are talking about here? I'm a cynic, I have a negative attitude about life and my own self worth as a form of protection from what I perceive as emotional threats. By believing that unconditional love from God is "too good to be true" I'm actively rejecting the love of God himself. He's trying to love me, arms stretched out, begging me to trust him and be comforted, and I won't do it. I won't come inside the house and eat because I'm afraid he's going to tell me I'm bad, so instead I just stand out in the rain. I won't even take a chance. I guess as I'm trying hard to grow spiritually, I'm at least standing on the porch now, it's taken awhile and at this rate I'll be 80 years old before I ring the door bell, and you know what, at that point he'll still answer the door and be so happy I'm finally coming inside, but I could have been inside eating, having fun, playing games, this whole time but I didn't because I was scared. Interesting. I honestly thought that tonight's blog was going to be boring, but I've had a lot of self discovery tonight.
19:10 - Here Nephi connects the ancient God of Israel to the man who will be born a baby and crucified as Jesus. Here's an interesting question. Crucifixion was invented by the Romans many years after Lehi left Jerusalem, how would Nephi had known what crucifixion was? He says that it was according to the words of "Neum," it must have been something taught in the ancient scripture that Nephi had access to but that hadn't really been searched diligently before.
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