I recently finished my (whateverth) reading of the Book of Mormon. Having been born into the Church--and having served an LDS mission--I've spent a great deal of time in that book. It's not the book that I've read the most (that probably goes to Hamlet), but it's up there. I read it every year and a half, or so, give or take. I sometimes diverge into other levels of scripture, but I cycle around to it regularly.
Members of the Church--rightly, I think--insist that the eschatological stakes of the entire Church hinge upon the Book of Mormon, but I'm not exploring the ideas of the afterlife here. Instead, I want to share a story that a coworker shared with me.
Like many who teach at my school, she had had a conversation with teenagers that changed the way she thought about things. This is something that requires a certain amount of humility, not just as an adult, but as a teacher, too: The acknowledgment that there is a different way of viewing the world that you hadn't considered before.
In my friend's case, the (as she paraphrased it to me) main idea was, "Do you think that you can find God inside of four walls?"
This is intriguing to me, because as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I have devoted (using that word deliberately) countless hours to the institution. While the student's comment was, as I take it, toward the idea of being a worse worshiper by virtue of location (being at church on Sundays...or not), there is a lot more that's built into a believer's lifestyle than what happens during the hour (or three) at the beginning of each week.
But, for a Mormon, the idea of sacred spaces--dedicated areas of the world that are, indeed, a different place for worship--seems natural and unassailable. Of course you can find God inside of four walls: That's what churches and temples are all about. Indeed, in Mormon parlance, temples are reverentially referred to as "the House of the Lord", no metaphor intended.
While there could be implications of what that means on the most literal of levels, I actually wanted to cycle back to where I started this essay: The Book of Mormon and, more broadly, scripture in general. The student asked if God is within four walls, but I wonder if God can be found inside two covers.
On my mission, one of the things that we would do to help communicate our message was to use pictures from the Church in what we called "ghetto flips". These were flip charts of the most important pieces of doctrine that we wanted to share, cut, folded, and glued together into the logical chain of details that comprised what was then called the first discussion. To get these made, we would cannibalize ruined copies of the Book of Mormon--copies that had been dropped in a Miamian puddle, left too long in a too-hot trunk, or rumpled during shipping--and cut out the pictures. Sometimes, we even stripped off the front cover to provide a foundation for the flips.
When I first started doing this in front of a new missionary, he had a mild panic attack. I got the sense that he felt I was desecrating the Holy Word of God by repurposing the Book of Mormon this way. Since I can be acerbic and blunt when I get in the mood to be, I snorted at his worry and waved it away. I said to him something along the lines of, "It's just print on paper. It has to be in your heart for it to matter."
I think that's the case with all scripture. I know that some sects of Islam feel that desecrating the Quran is a blasphemy in and of itself, while others don't even think a translation out of Arabic is the Quran at all, it being revealed in Arabic and therefore only fully correct in its original tongue. I daresay there are some Mormons who feel similarly (at least, about the first idea--that desecration is a blasphemy), though I may be overstating many people's opinions.
It makes me wonder, though: Where is God in scripture? Is He in the words? In the ideas? In the lives that people live? Outside of the books? Having Him packaged tightly into a few hundred pages--a few thousand, if we combine all the sacred literature of the major denominations of the world--seems limiting. Can you find God inside of four walls? Can you find Him inside a thousand pages with the instrument of His death marked on the front?
I can imagine some primary platitudes being bandied about that might strike superficially at what I'm asking here, but I think there's something more profound to explore in these questions. The concept of God--as multifaceted and manifold as that can be--is found in these books. But the immense diversity of religions, religiosity, denominations, orthodoxy, and orthopraxy points to the idea that God can't be boxed in by brick and mortar, nor, perhaps, ink and paper.
Members of the Church--rightly, I think--insist that the eschatological stakes of the entire Church hinge upon the Book of Mormon, but I'm not exploring the ideas of the afterlife here. Instead, I want to share a story that a coworker shared with me.
Like many who teach at my school, she had had a conversation with teenagers that changed the way she thought about things. This is something that requires a certain amount of humility, not just as an adult, but as a teacher, too: The acknowledgment that there is a different way of viewing the world that you hadn't considered before.
In my friend's case, the (as she paraphrased it to me) main idea was, "Do you think that you can find God inside of four walls?"
This is intriguing to me, because as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I have devoted (using that word deliberately) countless hours to the institution. While the student's comment was, as I take it, toward the idea of being a worse worshiper by virtue of location (being at church on Sundays...or not), there is a lot more that's built into a believer's lifestyle than what happens during the hour (or three) at the beginning of each week.
But, for a Mormon, the idea of sacred spaces--dedicated areas of the world that are, indeed, a different place for worship--seems natural and unassailable. Of course you can find God inside of four walls: That's what churches and temples are all about. Indeed, in Mormon parlance, temples are reverentially referred to as "the House of the Lord", no metaphor intended.
While there could be implications of what that means on the most literal of levels, I actually wanted to cycle back to where I started this essay: The Book of Mormon and, more broadly, scripture in general. The student asked if God is within four walls, but I wonder if God can be found inside two covers.
On my mission, one of the things that we would do to help communicate our message was to use pictures from the Church in what we called "ghetto flips". These were flip charts of the most important pieces of doctrine that we wanted to share, cut, folded, and glued together into the logical chain of details that comprised what was then called the first discussion. To get these made, we would cannibalize ruined copies of the Book of Mormon--copies that had been dropped in a Miamian puddle, left too long in a too-hot trunk, or rumpled during shipping--and cut out the pictures. Sometimes, we even stripped off the front cover to provide a foundation for the flips.
When I first started doing this in front of a new missionary, he had a mild panic attack. I got the sense that he felt I was desecrating the Holy Word of God by repurposing the Book of Mormon this way. Since I can be acerbic and blunt when I get in the mood to be, I snorted at his worry and waved it away. I said to him something along the lines of, "It's just print on paper. It has to be in your heart for it to matter."
I think that's the case with all scripture. I know that some sects of Islam feel that desecrating the Quran is a blasphemy in and of itself, while others don't even think a translation out of Arabic is the Quran at all, it being revealed in Arabic and therefore only fully correct in its original tongue. I daresay there are some Mormons who feel similarly (at least, about the first idea--that desecration is a blasphemy), though I may be overstating many people's opinions.
It makes me wonder, though: Where is God in scripture? Is He in the words? In the ideas? In the lives that people live? Outside of the books? Having Him packaged tightly into a few hundred pages--a few thousand, if we combine all the sacred literature of the major denominations of the world--seems limiting. Can you find God inside of four walls? Can you find Him inside a thousand pages with the instrument of His death marked on the front?
I can imagine some primary platitudes being bandied about that might strike superficially at what I'm asking here, but I think there's something more profound to explore in these questions. The concept of God--as multifaceted and manifold as that can be--is found in these books. But the immense diversity of religions, religiosity, denominations, orthodoxy, and orthopraxy points to the idea that God can't be boxed in by brick and mortar, nor, perhaps, ink and paper.