Warning: All the questions in this post are rhetorical.
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| I tried to distract him from his grumps one morning by showing him my camera on my phone. It obviously didn't work. |
I'll start this rant by saying that I believe in the eighth article of faith:
"We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God."
But nothing has challenged my testimony of the Bible like actually reading it.
Corbin and I are reading through the New Testament for couples study, and I'm reading through the Old Testament for my personal study. You must remember that I did all four years of early morning seminary, and I've attended Sunday school every year of my life. I even took a couple classes on the Bible in college. I've studied Bible stories pretty thoroughly. I've never actually sat down and ready the whole Bible before, though. Until now.
Genesis. First book in the Bible. It contains some super crazy stuff! I'd only been taught the nice things that happen, or heard stories with a clear lesson involved. But what am I supposed to get from the story of Lot's daughters making him drunk and getting it on with him to further his seed? Or Noah Cursing his son for seeing him laying drunk, uncovered in his tent?
Of course these are crude estimations of the stories, but still. People in the old testament are outrageous! In my opinion, they over react, make stupid decisions, and aren't punished. In fact, this segues into stage two of my rant. I always thought Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were so often talked about in the Bible because they were super righteous prophets. God covenanted these awesome covenants with them, promising tons of blessings. However, in my opinion, they were not super righteous. How could they deserve these covenants?
Don't even get me started on the sons of Israel. Their tribes are so important to the church that I thought each of them would be an awesome guy and worthy to have generations and generations of saints looking up to them. I guess I never had connected that these were the same guys who wanted to murder their brother, then ended up selling him into slavery. Plus, before the Joseph story even happened, these guys were killing people, sleeping with people they shouldn't, hating on each other. It's madness.
But maybe God's options weren't that great back then of righteous dudes. Or maybe the Lord covenanted with lots of people, and this is the only record we have of a situation like this. Any way you swing it, God's ways are mysterious. Especially to me right now.
Corbin keeps telling me that the culture was so different back then, that it's not all going to make sense to me. Plus, many of the plain and precious truths have been lost in translation, etc.
Why does the church take such stock in the Bible, then?
It makes me feel a bit like a hypocrite, to take some of the passages of the Bible so literally and believe in it so strongly, and then turn around and completely ignore some passages.
Just last night we were reading 1 Corinthians 14. Verse 33 is so beautiful, and I find it so true.
"For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints."
The very next verse says,
"Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law."
Maybe these two verses are an example of doctrine vs. church policy. Doctrine never changes, God's eternal principles. But policy does change from time to time, like letting young men and women start their missions earlier. The trick about the Bible is being able to tell the difference between the two.
If I didn't have a testimony in the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, and modern revelation to show us how to run the church today; if I only had the Bible to go off of, I don't know that I could believe any of it fully. It would be so hard to pick out the nuggets of truth and wise principles out of all the crazy cultural and inaccurate business that goes on.
I have a lot of studying and pondering to do before I can fully integrate what the Bible is into my beliefs and my testimony.
Your reward for reading this post (or even scrolling to the end), is Theo playing peek-a-boo!
And yes, he did have an intense encounter with the pavement. But he is nearly all healed up, so no worries.
2 comments:
Sounds like your studies have been difficult. :-) I also believe the 8th article of faith...and I (no surprise here) believe as Corbin stated that times were very different..... many things and much more information than we have has been lost.... and the Book of Mormon is such an awesome book and scripture because we got it from one prophet who was led by God. It didn't get to us with the same "telephone" type of experiences. My suggestion would be to pray about and He will help you to feel at peace. :-) I have read most of the Bible (grew up in a different church you know... :-) and have wondered about some of the things read as well. Maybe consider King David..Samson...etc., they definitely had their righteous and unrighteous moments....they were human and made mistakes. I hope if anyone reads my sporadic journals they will cut me some slack. :-) Love you Julie!!!!
One of the hardest things on my mission was reading the New Testament when people were using it every day to refute us. Definitely felt the 'selective verse' usage vibe from both sides when I read it. Isn't it great that we have lots of other scriptures that help us align everything? I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon, which always explains so wonderfully why a story was included.
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