Of Reading and Home Teaching

This will be about reconciliation in a couple of ways.

First: I read and completely agreed with a scripture today that before I read with some amount of skepticism. This is the verse:

Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people (Mosiah 18:20).

This was something that I read as a missionary and a student and thought that there really must be something missing here. Or maybe not missing, but perhaps this verse only applied to Alma’s people. How can you possibly on preach about two things? Wouldn’t that make church a moot? Wouldn’t that make scripture reading a one-time deal, and you could stop once you read the first invitation to have faith in God and to repent of your sins? I mean, Seriously!

But something has happened to me since my graduation from BYU a year ago, and also I think in my not having a full-time teaching job with the church. I’ve essentially been divorced from any institutionalized religion. Sure, I’ve been attending my ward, but with kids and things, there’s really not as much mental exercising going on as in religion classes both as student and teacher. Not that I have anything against any of my religion classes at BYU or my experiences teaching Seminary. The change has been something very much on the individual level. I could have had this understanding all those years as a missionary and student and could have benefited very much from it; but I couldn’t, to use an oft used analogy, see the forest for the trees.

I spent my time as a missionary, student, and teacher looking for things that were, for lack of a better word, interesting in the scriptures. I thought that was what edification consisted of. And this in spite of instruction from some very wise individuals who knew better. For my Seminary students I wanted to create an intense interest in the scriptures and in their origins and forms and stuff. I figured that’s what my instructors were doing in school.

Now, though, as I read Alma’s instruction to his people I understood it maybe for the first time. My journey through the Book of Mormon this year has been centered on these two core fundamental principles. And the journey has been refreshing. I’ve begun to see myself in my own carnal state. I’ve begun to understand where my life and desires are completely out of line and to trust in the grace of God to help me out of these things.

I think I’m becoming converted.