1 Nephi 1

Christlike Attributes

verse 1:

"having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days" Blue

"goodness...of God" Blue

"mysteries of God" Green

verse 4:

"the great city of Jerusalem must be destroyed" Red

verse 6:

Lehi prayed and received a vision Blue

verse 8:

Lehi prayed again and received a vision Blue

verse 12:

"he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord" Blue

verse 13:

"it should be destroyed, and the inhabitants thereof" Red

"many should perish by the sword" Red

"many should be carried away captive into Babylon" Red

verse 14:

"my father had read and seen many great and marvelous things" Blue

"thy throne is high in the heavens" Green

"thy power, and goodness, and mercy are over all the inhabitants of the earth" Blue

"because thou art merciful, thou wilt not suffer those who come unto thee that they shall perish" Blue

verse 19:

"the redemption of the world" Blue

verse 20:

"the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen" Blue

Commentary


I expected the Book of Mormon to be pretty neutral in the Blue and Red department.  Since in general, the Book of Mormon is the third piece of the puzzle that helps us to understand both the Old and New Testaments better.  But somehow, I really expected it to still be largely blue.  No one complains about the Book of Mormon having an angry god that they just can't understand.  So I was surprised when I ended up marking 4 reds in the first chapter.  That's 40% of the first chapter (discounting the one green)!  So I spent a little time looking more into the reds and realized that it's a common thing in the Book of Mormon to say, "the wicked will be destroyed" and focus on being righteous so you're not one of the ones destroyed.  But every event I can think of where the wicked are destroyed it's either factually provable (Jerusalem) and we learn about it in other scriptures or we're more intimately connected with the cities that are destroyed and agree that yes, they are in fact wicked and they have been warned and they knew better.  So it's not as harsh a blow as it feels like in the Old Testament.  At least, that's my current hypothesis.  After one chapter.  :)  But I do think the BoM will end up having more red than I expected.  I wonder (hope) if it will be the same in the NT.

As a note, if the scriptures referred to the same event, specifically, multiple times in one chapter, I only marked it once.  (Like referring to a single vision multiple times.)  If the same kind of event happened multiple times, I marked it each time (Lehi received multiple visions).  If I marked something once, then a specific detail about that event was given later, I marked both.  ("Jerusalem must be destroyed" and "many should perish by the sword")  Lastly, I'm imperfect, so I may occasionally break my own rules.  Feel free to correct me.

Christlike Attributes Project

The god of the Old Testament is typically seen as harsh, cruel, vindictive.  The God of the New Testament is typically seen as kind, merciful, forgiving.  The god of both books is Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever.  How can these seemingly opposite gods actually be one and the same?  And if they are the same, how do we reconcile the "mean" traits with our definition of being Christlike?

That's what this project is about.  I want to learn more about who Christ really is.  I want to reconcile the two extremes.  To do so, I have decided to go through the standard works and pull out all the attributes of Christ and compare them.  But that task is very overwhelming.  How do you go about categorizing hundreds of different attributes and comparing them?  How can you organize such a task?  By simplifying it, of course.

The more I think about this, the more I realize it isn't necessarily a matter of mean vs. nice.  Rather, it's often a matter of justice vs. mercy.  All of the stories I could think of where God seemed cruel or harsh could be seen as God being just without any mercy.  Perhaps it's an over-simplistic view, but it's a good place to start.  And it's not perfect.  (Please note that below I'm saying Mercy or "Christlike".) And perhaps as I get in deeper with this project, I'll change my tactics.  But for now, after a lot of thought and discussion, this is where I'm going to start.

Because there are so many different viewpoints in this world, I would love for anyone who is willing to help me out here.  Here's how this is going to work.  Every day (hopefully.  Being realistic, I'll probably skip some days.) I am going to read one chapter of scripture and highlight the various attributes of Christ in my scriptures and rank them accordingly:

Blue. Mercy (or, what we typically think of as Christlike)
Red. Just (or what we don't typically think of as Christlike. Doom, gloom, destruction… y'know.)
Green. Other attributes of Christ that don't really fit this scale, but I want to mark anyway.

Unfortunately, putting stories and verses in those categories isn't an exact science.  Which is why I need your help.  I will put up a new post for every chapter and put in my findings and thoughts.  I will leave comments open (though any tasteless, rude or demeaning comments (or just plain spam) will be deleted) to anyone who would like to comment, agree, or disagree with my findings.  I want to hear other people's opinions and views.  What may seem merciful to me may seem just to you.  I want to hear that.  Perhaps I only look at one person in the story and call it just and you look at someone else in the story and call it merciful.  I want that brought to my attention.  When I get to the end of this, I don't want to look back at my conclusions and see Christlike Attributes According to Tianna.  I want to see them through the eyes of many.

So please, feel free to join with me in my quest.  Don't feel like you have to read every chapter with me, but read when you can and comment when you want.  I'd love any input.

A change

I originally had a specific goal for this blog, as I laid out in my first post.  Clearly that didn't happen, as it was written over a year ago and nothing else ever posted.  I've made a decision that this is just going to be my religious blog where I write anything religious I want.  Many will have themes such as stories (my original intent) or a specific project I'm working on.  I'll label all of my posts to make it easier to find specific entries.  Thanks for understanding, all of the zero of you out there reading.  :)