Searching the Scriptures

Unintentional Jokes in the Scriptures

You know how sometimes when you read a passage in the scriptures then suddenly you see it differently and in a way that it was definitely not intended by the prophetic author? Here's a few:

1- Like when Nephi writes "wo, wo, wo be unto them" you can read it like he's trying to slow down a horse named "be unto them."

Preeeeettttty sure that's not what Nephi was talking about, but it's a funny read.

Yes, I'm writing this on fast sunday.
Why do you ask?

2- Did you hear about the food-fight in heaven? "Then I [Zechariah] turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll."

Duck! Hahaha. (But seriously, he describes how big it is in the next verse and if that was the size of a dinner roll flying at me you'd better believe I'd be sprinting outta there.)

3- Or the motorcycles in the Book of Mormon? "round tires like the moon; The chains and the bracelets, and the mufflers;" (2 Ne 13:18-19)

There are loads of those little unintentional jokes in the scriptures and any seminary student could point out half a dozen others as well. 

(Perhaps) Unintentional Lessons

I had a moment like that the other day myself, but instead of drawing unintended humor from it I was instead taught a unique lesson.

I was in Pocatello Idaho at the time staying with a cousin of mine and lounging on the guest bed while reading the scriptures on my phone. At the time for my scriptures study I was reading through any scriptures that mentioned the word "love" and I hit upon Jacob 7:23

"And it came to pass that peace and the love of God was restored again among the people; and they searched the scriptures"

I was intrigued by the link between loving God and searching the scriptures. I wanted to see if this particular pairing happened elsewhere in scripture where loving God and searching the scriptures had such a direct link.

So I opened a new page in the gospel library app in my phone and searched the scriptures for "search the scriptures."

See what I did there?

Let me explain again. 

In the Gospel Library app there's a search bar where you can type in whatever word or phrase you wish to find and it will bring up all the scriptures (and any other church materials) that have that word or phrase. 

So what I did was typed "search the scriptures" into the search bar and the app then ran a search through the scriptures to find any verses that said "search the scriptures."

(Do you feel like you're in Inception yet? Cause I sure do. I had to read that paragraph like four times to make sure I said all that right.)

Now at the time then I got a good laugh. Isn't it funny that with as many times as the scriptures tell us to "search the scriptures" we literally have a function on our phones that literally allows us to do just that! And with very little effort on our part!

I'm gonna go on a limb here. I'm gonna say that when the ancient American prophets were scratching the "search the scriptures" Book of Mormon verses onto metal plates they probably didn't fathom that we could search the complete standard works and other gospel sources in seconds using our phones. 

I'm gonna go on another limb here and say that God probably knew exactly what kinds of resources we were going to have available to us and directed those prophets to write accordingly.

Searching the Scriptures

For the majority of my life my scripture study has consisted of reading chronologically. I start in 1st Nephi and quit halfway through 2nd Nephi.

Nah I'm kidding. But I do tend to just read straight through; beginning to end, start to finish, and then do it all over again.


Understand that in no way am I saying reading chronologically through the scriptures is not an effective way to study! It's treated me well for many years and I'll keep studying like that till the day I die (and probably after that too to be honest!).

But maybe we can switch up our normal study habits with a little bit of searching. 

In the scriptures themselves the phrase "search the scriptures" is found 48 times. Said by everyone from Christ in the New Testament to Alma in the Book of Mormon. Now you can study the scriptures without "searching" them, but usually the two go hand in hand.

"Studying" the scriptures doesn't have to be anything huge. We don't have to be preparing a sacrament meeting talk or engrossed in some intense probing of the depths of human understanding to make a "study" of the scriptures. But studying is definitely more involved than just "reading." After all, reading, studying, and pondering are three very different things. President Eyring said it like this in the October 2010 General Conference.

We read words and we may get ideas.

We study and we may discover patterns and 

connections in scripture.

We ponder and we invite revelation by the Spirit.

I have found that a great tool in helping me study and ponder the scriptures, instead of just merely reading them, is using the search function on my phone or on lds.org to read scriptures by topic. 

Some people think that using this search function would be a waste of time unless you're going to be making an intense study of the scriptures or preparing a lesson or a talk. But let me show you how easy it can be. Even if you don't have much time for your scripture study a few verses can always be read and thought about during the remainder of the day.

Here's a quick tutorial to show you how easy it is to "search the scriptures." 

1) Here's a search for the word "love." I selected to search in the scriptures in the Book of Mormon and then it will just give me all the verses in chronological order. If I select the first verse it will take me to it.

2) Now I'm seeing the verse with the word "love" highlighted. It's also telling me at the bottom of my screen that there are two more instances of "love" later on in the chapter. If I tap the arrows in the blue bar at the bottom of my screen it will jump to them automatically. Once I'm finished then I tap "Done" and then tap the magnifying glass again to go back to my search.

3) Now when I look at my search results I can see that the first result is in gray instead of black. That's telling me which search results I've already looked at.

What to Search For?

When Alice, in Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland, comes to a crossroads she has an interesting discussion with the Cheshire cat:

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.”

I really REALLY hated this movie as a kid.
Still do in fact.

(Sidenote: I thought the last two lines of that quote were particularly interesting. I've heard the first four lines a lot, even in general conference and such, but the last two were new to me. In order to get somewhere, even if we don't know exactly where we're going, we have to walk; and sometimes for a long time. I've felt like that in my life particularly as a young adult. I don't know exactly where God it taking me all the time, and that makes for very fretful moments of decisions when I reach these Wonderland crossroads. But the longer I walk the more clear the path becomes.)

Sometimes I feel like this when I go to search the scriptures. I've been reading chronologically for a while and I want to shake up my scripture reading with a search on some topic, but I'm not sure what to study. The low hanging fruit, of course, is anything to do with Christ, Christlike attributes, basic principles, and doctrines.

All in all I've never done a search that I thought afterwards was worthless. These are the words of God after all; you're going to get something good out of them if you're looking for it!

All in All

I want to keep this post relatively short. Another day, perhaps, I'll write on pondering and how vital that is. Sufficeth to say that when I'm "searching" the scriptures and studying by topic the pondering comes much more naturally and fluidly than when I'm reading chronologically. But maybe that's just me!

Whatever you're doing for your scripture reading/study then just remember to do it consistently. You can't run a marathon if you're only eating a couple times a week, and this life is so much more than just a marathon.

Keep Pushing On

Andrew

Charity- A Relationship

A New Idea

I can't take credit for this concept.

I wish I could! I first heard this when I was sitting in my Doctrine and Covenants class at BYU. Brother Sweat (name not changed, his last name really is Sweat) was talking about faith, hope, and charity.

I can't remember how it was introduced, but it was something like this "Charity is the pure love of Christ" (Moroni 7:47).

Hearing this idea about the meaning of charity was one of those moments when you suddenly see something you've been looking at your whole life in a completely new light! It was mind-blowing!

You're probably sitting there like, "I don't get it..."

Let me try to read this a different way.

Let's say one day I tell you "I have a love of dogs." Would you think I'm saying that the way I love other people is similar to the kind of love dogs express toward people? No, definitely not. You would just think that I love dogs and I'm just phrasing in a funny way.

So in the scriptures when it says "charity is the pure love of Christ" does that mean that charity is loving people as Christ loves? Or does it mean that to have charity we love Christ with a pure and perfect love?

You might want to read the last two paragraphs again a few times.

So what I'm saying is that charity can be interpreted as a pure loving relationship between us and Christ rather than just an imitation of Christ's love toward others.

A Different Interpretation

Now I don't want to tread on any toes here. I've had people quote to me my whole life that to have charity means to have pure love in my heart as Christ loves. Prophets and apostles have spoken of charity as pure love in general conference. Even on the LDS website in the topics section it says "Charity is the pure love of Christ. It is the love that Christ has for the children of men and that the children of men should have for one another."

All that being said, I firmly believe that there is no one single right way to interpret a scripture. Haha there are definitely wrong ways to interpret scriptures, I have heard plenty of those on my mission! But when people read a verse of scripture it's going to mean something different to each of them.

This way of looking at charity, as a relationship between us and Christ rather than an imitation of Christ's love, is simply a new way of looking at an old scripture that we've all heard a bajillion times.

And we do hear it a lot. I mean, when someone says they're going to teach/talk about charity you can pretty much watch the youth methodically open up to Moroni 7 and immediately begin drooling onto the pages as they pass out with their heads in their hands.

Hopefully this will provide a different perspective and save those pages a bit of moisture.

Scriptures about Charity

Thinking about charity as a relationship between us and Christ seems to make other scriptures fall into place.

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth."

Christ will never fail us. If we have a relationship with Him then He will never forsake us. The greatest act of charity is the Atonement. If charity for us means a relationship with Christ, then charity for Christ means His relationship with the Father. Charity never faileth. When Christ was in the garden of Gethsemane he turned to His relationship with the Father to sustain Him. "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt." (Mark 14:36)

"... he must needs have charity; for if he have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity."

The first great commandment is to love God. Without a love of Christ we are truly nothing because in the eyes of God we have not fulfilled the greatest and most important commandment.

"And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." 

Now, instead of this being a list of the character traits we need to live in order to have charity, these all come as natural "side-effects," if you will, of our personal relationship with Christ.

Looking at all these scriptures with the idea in mind that charity is, first and foremost, our relationship with Christ lends a slightly different meaning to each of these. Tie together these three scriptures:

- "If ye have not charity, ye are nothing" (Moroni 7:44, 1 Cor 13:3)
- "But the greatest of these is charity." (1 Cor 13:13)
- "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."  (John 17:3)

It becomes obvious that Charity is so much more than just love of others. It truly means having a relationship with Christ. However, that's not to say it doesn't have to do with also loving our fellow man.

Loving Others Will Come As A Natural Result Of Loving Christ

Have you ever been so excited about something that you just had to share it? I know I sure have! I'll learn some cool new thing in school or be introduced to some new food that I'll immediately fall in love with.

What's the first thing you think of doing? If you're like me you think "Who can I share this with??"

I'll be super excited to share that cool new fact with my family or have them try whatever food I've just gotten hooked on! Usually they just roll their eyes at me as I excitedly talk about some new bit of human physiology, but they tolerate me well. But that's what we like to do! Once we love something we want to introduce others to that same thing.  (Funny side-note, guys will also do that with things that are gross. Have you ever heard this before? "Oh that is gross!! ... Hey dude come smell this!")

One funny example of this is when a friend of mine had pretzel-bites for the first time. I think I heard about pretzel-bites at least every few minutes for... hours... Until finally that evening we went and had these world-stopping pretzel-bites! Hahaha they were good! Not mortgage-my-house-to-get-them-every-day kind of good, but they were alright!

John 17:3

That's how charity works as well. Once we begin to establish that pure loving relationship with Christ then we are bound to begin expressing that same love for others. It's a natural consequence. You cannot love Christ, with that pure love He has for us, and yet hate your neighbor! (And if you're trying to do that then I recommend you hop off the fence. I'm sure that's beginning to chafe.)

When we begin to love Christ then He blesses us "that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son." Have you ever felt this? When you're truly striving to follow Christ then he is able to work through you and your capacity to love others increases.

I noticed this most on my mission. Every person I taught and passed on the street (or in the jungle) I felt a love for. Even a yearning that they would someday come to know the truths that I knew. Because of my relationship with Christ He was able to bless me with a love for others that I didn't even know.

You cannot love Christ, with that pure love He has for us, and yet hate your neighbor. 

Unfortunately the opposite is possible.

Loving Christ Is Not Necessarily A Natural Consequence Of Loving Others

I've known some very kind and tenderhearted atheists/agnostics. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.  They love and serve their fellow man, perhaps better than some of us that profess a love and knowledge of Christ and His gospel, but they have no belief in, knowlege of, or love of, Jesus Christ.

Would we say that someone who has no belief in God but treats others with kindness has charity? In the colloquial non-religious sense, yes! They are very charitable by the world's standards! But what about in the true meaning of charity?

Would we be able to say that their "charity," their kindness toward others, is more important than faith and hope in Christ? As it says in 1 Cor 13:13 "Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

I would tentatively suggest that someone who loves God with all his/her heart, but struggles having good relationships with others, is probably better off on judgement day than someone who loves others, but, of their own volition (choice), has absolutely no belief in, or relationship with, God.

Neither one of those are necessarily good situations to be in. Perhaps someone may struggle having healthy relationships with others because it's difficult for them to trust people. Perhaps in their childhood they were raised in a situation that has made it difficult for them to freely love. God has promised to fill us with His love as we pray for charity, a love for the Savior.

Now, if we are striving to have a relationship with Christ then certainly increasing in love for our fellow man can help us come to love Christ more. I feel like I've come to know Christ more as I've enriched my relationships with my parents, my family members, etc. They've all taught me things and helped me in ways that have drawn me closer to Christ.

So I don't mean to say that loving others can't help us love Christ. It's just that loving others will only bring us closer to Christ if that's already something important we've established in our lives.

Perhaps that would be an interesting way we can evaluate our relationships. Think of someone in your life. How has your relationship with Christ influenced your relationship with that person? And how has your relationship with that person influenced your relationship with Christ?

The Word Charity

Google's definition of charity leaves out
any religions connotation at all.

I'm afraid that the word "charity," along with so many other words defining fundamental gospel principles, has become watered down and has lost it's significance. What used to mean a pure relationship with Christ, or unadulterated love, now means "the poor house" when we hear of people giving to "charity," or people being able to write off "charitable donations" in their taxes.

Doesn't that sound just like Satan? To take a word that means something so significant, that if we aren't "found possessed of it at the last day" we are "nothing," and then water it down to the point of being nearly synonymous with simply "kind" or "generous."

"And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."

But charity is so much more than all of that. I'm not suggesting that we take to the streets with signs trying to change the meaning of charity back to its scriptural definition. But in our scripture study and in our gospel conversations think of charity as more than just

This Is All Very Nice... So What?

I've shared a lot about charity. If you've made it to this point then I congratulate you. Hopefully you've enjoyed this different view of charity as much as I have. But what now?

Moroni said it best, and it would be a poor substitution if I were to try and paraphrase his words.

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure." 

I love the fact that praying is the prerequisite for charity. One of the greatest blessings from God, a relationship with our Savior, is available to us. It's is simply contingent on our asking for it.

I love talking about prayer. It's so beautiful and simple. I won't spend any extra space here writing about prayer (I wrote a different post about it a while back that has a few of my thoughts). But just pray. It's that simple. As my mother says "You can never err on the side of prayer."

Charity

Pray for charity. Establish a relationship first with Christ by loving, serving, and coming to know Him.

Remember, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Matt 22:37-39)

Everything else will fall into place if we can keep those two commandments.

I know God lives. I know Christ atoned for my sins. Because of that, nothing is impossible.

Keep Pushing On

Andrew Davis

Phayth (A different look at a familiar topic)

It's embarrassing how long I've been feeling prompted that I needed to write this post and yet I've been procrastinating it. I don't know exactly why either. For one, I was a little intimidated at the subject matter. How do I approach a topic that's the bread and butter of every sacrament talk, sunday school lesson, and seminary discussion? How do I properly convey the thoughts and feelings that God has put in my heart about this matter?

But God put a burr under my saddle recently when I received a challenge from a friend of mine to write this article by Sunday night. So here I am.

A few weeks ago I was preparing a talk on Elder Neil L. Andersen's talk Faith Is Not by Chance, but by Choice. It made me start to wonder. If faith is a choice then how do we chose it?

Choice

Let's say you're on some sort of show like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and the question is this:

"If you're going through a rough time in your life what is the correct course of action?"
A) Wallow In Self-Pity
B) Blame Others
C) Have Faith
D) Eat Your Sorrows Away
E) A, B & D

What in the world could the correct answer be?? (I'll give you a hint, it's faith. It's always faith.)(We end up picking E though a lot don't we?)

It's never that simple though is it? If life were a series of game-show choices one of them would always come out the clear winner.

"You're about to go to bed and haven't read your scriptures. What do you do?"
A) Go to bed, duh. You read your scriptures yesterday!
B) Get up and eat ice cream. Can't go wrong with ice cream!
C) Read your scriptures.
D) Pull out your phone intending to read scriptures and check facebook on your phone real quick. Suddenly it's an hour later and you're finally going to bed, still without reading your scriptures.

Overly simplified examples? Maybe. But the point here is that "faith" in and of itself is not an option for choosing.

Options

We really only have three categories of choice in our life and they're beautifully stated in Mosiah 4:30

But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember, and perish not.

It's so clear here that we really only have power over three things in life. That's it! 

We choose our thoughts. 

We choose our words. 

We choose our actions.

Within each of these categories we can choose faith or we can choose doubt. Often our actions will follow our words, which will follow our thoughts. But admittedly not always. That's why I'll treat them as three different things, even though they are quite interconnected.

Actions

I'll start with actions because that's probably the most visible choice towards faith that we can make. James 2:17 "Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone."

Faith without works is dead.

But let's be careful here. I've heard plenty of experiences of people outwardly living the gospel, going to church, fulfilling callings, etc. and then suddenly falling off the bandwagon because, although they were going through the motions, their actions were empty. Void of true intent. Void of faith.

It works are the ores then faith is the boat.
You're not getting anywhere without both.

We must then assume that the reverse is true.

Work without faith is dead.

Read that a few more times. I'm serious. This is something that we may not realize as a church.

You can go to church all you want but unless you're doing it in faith, even a modicum of faith, then it won't benefit you. This is why cynics and sceptics of the Book of Mormon can read it cover to cover and not benefit from it at all! They're not reading it with any amount of faith. Work without faith is dead.

I'll admit that occasionally I'll go to the temple and not get much out of it. Is that because the Spirit wasn't there? It is because there wasn't anything for me to learn? Certainly not! The Spirit is always there and there's so much I have yet to learn it's embarrassing. It's because I didn't go with faith as my motive.

I realize that approaching faith as a motive might seem a little abstract to some. But in my mind it fits rather naturally. Think about it and see if faith in Christ and His promises isn't the ultimate foundation for your obedience to His commandments.

We must choose faith with our actions as well as choose faith in our actions.

Words

How do we choose faith with our words?

I'll give you a hint. It's not to walk around muttering "faith, faith, faith, faith..." under our breath. That wouldn't be very helpful and we would probably get people worrying about us.

It's simple and beautifully phrased in Ephesians 4:29 and For the Strength of Youth
"Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good."

If you would, follow the link and read the council on language in For the Strength of Youth. It's three very short paragraphs and I literally couldn't say it better myself.

All of that being said, I would submit that choosing faith in our communication and merely having uplifting conversation are different, though very similar.

Rather than delimiting exactly what I believe the differences are between the two I would invite you to ponder this yourself: What does it mean to me to choose faith in the words I say?

Thoughts

This is a favorite topic of mine. The mind is so powerful! I'm quite excited about a topic I'm thinking about writing on soon that deals a lot more with thoughts and the power of a single thought. But for now I'll confine myself to how we might choose faith in our thoughts.

Choosing faith in your thoughts is, I think, the best part of this topic of choice. Everything stems from our thoughts. If we can exercise self control in our thoughts, driving them toward God, then we will find the confidence spoken of in D&C 121:45 "Then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven."

Because our thoughts are so private then we tend to guard them less than we might guard our actions and our words. We trick ourselves into thinking we can let ourselves dwell on pessimistic or depressing thoughts without repercussion.

How do we choose faith in our thoughts? First we understand the relationship we have with our thoughts. Some people are inclined to think that we have little to no control over our thoughts. They just sort of happen and we are just along for the ride as passengers to our thoughts. I hope as you were reading that then you, like I did while writing it, thought "No, that's ridiculous. We choose what to think about." 

Yes! Exactly! We choose what thoughts dominate our mind and what thoughts are pushed to the side. Now I understand that some times it's easier than others to control our thoughts than at other times. Someone who has recently experienced some great tragedy will not consciously be able to simply stop thinking about what happened. But in all circumstances the way our thoughts are "tinted" is what we control most of all. We can choose to view our thoughts through the lense of pessimism or the rose-colored glasses of optimism. Just so we can choose faith.

I don't mean to imply that choosing faith in our thoughts will always result in a happy-go-lucky attitude, or that a facade of all-is-well-in-Zion should be adopted. That would honestly be counterproductive in some circumstances. How would we possibly "mourn with those that mourn" if we see mourning as faithless? No, choosing faith in our thoughts means that although we may be sad, or hurt, or frustrated, or hopeless, that we consciously choose to trust God.

Personally I've had experiences lately to choose faith in my thoughts. Satan has tried so hard to get me to doubt myself. He knows that if he can win the war in my head then he wins the war in my life. There have been times, when I'm at the very end of my emotional rope, when I have reached a critical point in my mind and very literally prayed/spoken: "Lord, I choose faith. Please help me." When I make that conscious choice to have faith in God then He inevitably steps in and I can feel an almost immediate easing of whatever burden I am feeling weighted with.

Ergo

When you come upon a situation in which you have a choice to make I would invite you to choose faith. Your actions, your words, and your thoughts are the choices you have.

It's helped me immensely in my life at least. I believe it will help you too.

Keep Pushing On

Andrew

If faith isn't the seed then what is?
What does that mean for us?

PS: Faith is like a little seed... or is it? 
I didn't have time to go into this point, but I still want to make mention of it. Faith, as described by Alma 32, is not like a seed. Read that chapter carefully and see what the "seed" we plant in our hearts really is. Then see what role faith plays in that process. Interesting isn't it?