Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

I just wanted to take a few minutes to share some of the things that I’ve learned over the last several weeks. I fully intend to come back and continue the scripture blog here at some point but I’m barely hanging on as it is and between just trying to not self-destruct and wanting to finish my MBA program so that I don’t waste $5,000 I just can’t bring myself to focus on anything else right now. It’s been almost 3 months since my life flipped upside down and I feel like I’ve lived 8 lifetimes. I can’t even remember my life before this. I was so close to peace, just weeks away from breathing easier for the first time in my life and now I’ll never have it, not in this life anyway. I was so close and it’s like the weight of the next 50 years are crushing me and it’s exhausting. I have lived a difficult, painful, and violent life and this is by far the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and I think this is going to be my life until I die, and that is a very daunting and exhausting p...

I just wanted to take a minute to do an update on why I haven't been posting recently. First, I started an MBA program on May 1st. I intended on doing both this and that like I did when I was doing my Bachelor's program last year but I had something serious happen within my family that has been like a sledgehammer to the face and that has occupied all my time and energy for the last 6 weeks. Without getting into the specifics, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me and that is saying something. There's a poem called "The View From Half Way Down" that was written by a man who had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge to commit suicide. He obviously lived but the poem is about how his whole perspective changed when he was half way down between the bridge and the water and that's very much how I feel right now. I feel like I had a certain type of life with certain problems and worries and issues, then 10 minutes later I had a completely new life, everyt...

Leviticus chapter 21 is a little bit intense, it goes back to instructions for the Levite priests. The first topic is “there shall none be defiled for the dead among his people.” This means the priests aren’t allowed to come in contact with dead bodies except for his mother, father, son, daughter, brother, or unmarried virgin sister. This offers an interesting insight into the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Levite priest had a donkey and was the only one who could have realistically carried the injured man to get help but he refused and one of the reasons was that the injured man might have appeared to be dead and the Levite priest didn’t want to become ritually unclean and have to undergo the cleansing process for 7 days in which he would have had to destroy the clothes he was wearing and go without his priestly pay. Just an interesting insight. Another interesting thing about this commandment is that the people included in the group of bodies the priest could come in contact with...

Chapter 20 is another conglomerate of already discussed commands, but starts off with something a little unfamiliar which is giving of children “unto Molech.” We first heard about Molech just recently and It doesn’t say exactly what happens to these kids, like if they are given to serve Molech or if they are to be human sacrifices, which TB suggests that that is the case. Any one who gives their children to be given “unto Molech” or I would imagine any other type of god as well, are to be put to death, more specifically, “the people of the land shall stone him with stones.” It’s interesting that God prescribed the method of execution here and TB suggests that if it was like beheading or shot with an arrow or something like that, then it would only take one single skilled executioner to perform the task. But with stoning, it takes a whole group of people hurling stones at the person for a while before they actually die. The point, TB says, is to make sure that lots of people participat...

The IM classifies chapter 19 as the start of the section of “Laws of Mercy and Righteousness,” and while TB doesn’t do that, he notes that chapter 19 is special to the Hebrews because it’s considered a “Torah within a Torah,” because it reiterates laws that have already been discussed. Back in chapter 11, TB spent a whole lecture of what it means to be holy and why it’s important. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it because it’s such an abstract concept and to me it just means continuously seeking a closer relationship with God through small, consistent improvements in our behaviors through repentance and the atonement. It’s not a glamorous definition and it’s not quick or easy, it’s definitely a “slow and steady wins the race” kind of mindset. Anyway, chapter 19 starts with the command from God “ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.” In the next few verses 6 of the 10 commandments are reemphasized, in addition to more practical commandments about fairness in your work, tr...

Chapter 18 covers everyone’s favorite topic… sex. TB notes that this isn’t really about sex, because like we’ve discussed previously, adultery was culturally only a sin that females could be found guilty of, it was about who a man was allowed to marry. He points out that in ancient middle eastern culture at that time, the most ideal spouse was to be a cousin, so God wanted a more diverse gene pool, therefore implemented all these rules about who a man could marry. The whole thing is really focused on who has the right to possess which woman, and I find it kind of irritating, but it is what it is. The IM notes that the phrase “uncover the nakedness” was a euphemism at the time to mean sexual intercourse, and if that’s the case then it might seem like God is saying that as long as the man doesn’t have sex with these prohibited women, then he has a full license to do whatever he wants, which some men might have taken to mean that but I reject it. The law is and was that sexual relations ...

Chapter 17 gives an interesting and, at least to me, unexpected commandment and that is that all animals that will be used for food must be first sacrificed at the tabernacle. This means that if a family is going to eat meat for dinner, they have to take the animal to the tabernacle first to be properly sacrificed. This is really interesting to me because I could only imagine the volume increase this one commandment made as far as the work load for the temple workers. As far as why God made this commandment, I could see it as being made so that all animal life could be respected, so if you wanted to eat meat then you had to offer that meat first to God. The IM also notes that this might be because the Hebrews at this point had 400 years of being immersed in Egyptian religious traditions and apparently there were a lot of rituals that involved blood. So if God could control when and where that blood was shed, then it set the conditions for what the blood could be used for and deny the b...