True Scripture Mastery

Most people in the world today simply do not have enough information to formulate an opinion on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Suppose you were one of those people. Maybe you knew one of the church's members but aside from rumors or a few facts you had heard about their church, the one thing that stood out was their belief in an additional volume of scripture they call the Book of Mormon. A copy ends up in your hands, and you decide to flip the book open and randomly read wherever the page lands. The verse you find reads:

But thou art the same yesterday, today, and forever; and thou hast elected us that we shall be saved, whilst all around us are elected to be cast by thy wrath down to hell; for the which holiness, O God, we thank thee; and we also thank thee that thou hast elected us, that we may not be led away after the foolish traditions of our brethren, which doth bind them down to a belief of Christ, which doth lead their hearts to wander far from thee, our God. --Alma 31:17

I've thought of that scenario when reading verses that don't describe official teachings of our church, but could be interpreted as such by lazy scholarship or dishonest individuals who oppose the church. ("See, it's in their Bible!") Hopefully that practice is rare. What is more common however, is when we in the greater Christian community rely on a single verse of scripture to teach a certain principle or doctrine. (Alma 31:17 describes a daily prayer offered by a community that had rejected Christianity.)

In the Latter-day Saint faith, we are living in the "scripture mastery" generation. Scripture mastery is a program within the church's youth seminary which is a class for high school aged Latter-day Saints. Scripture mastery offers about 25 sections of scripture (usually one or two verses) to memorize, learn, and apply. The goal is to learn the context, background, and other important points about that scripture. While scripture mastery is a great tool for young people to learn (there's even an iPhone app for it), the program cannot possibly replace hundreds of other excellent scripture verses, nor could it replace the importance of a multitude of discovered and undiscovered treasures contained around the verses.

For a long time I was guilty of what I will call a "one verse" method of approaching scripture. A verse in the Book of Mormon illustrates this point well. Out of all the lists that are out there of what we can do achieve a certain positive spiritual outcome, this one, to me, seemed to be the most simple and straightforward.

Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day. --Alma 37:37

If I counsel with the Lord, praying night and day, following the simple formula outlined, will I then be, "directed for good," and, "lifted up at the last day," or saved? Adherents to the beliefs of the LDS faith believe there is much more to working out your salvation than simply offering a couple of prayers a day, even if those prayers are the most sincere in the world. I was guilty of misinterpreting the qualifier, "if ye do these things," which led me, in my one verse mindset, to believe that Alma was referring to the "things" listed in that one verse. Looking at it a little more closely, however, I found that Alma's, "things" referred to a much longer list of necessary actions and attributes that include the following counsel to his eldest son, Helaman:

• Learn wisdom in youth; learn to keep the commandments of God (35)
• Cry unto God for all support (36)
• Let all actions and thoughts be unto the Lord (36)
• And then verse 37 as summarized in the paragraph, all which result in salvation

But that wasn't the only counsel he was giving to his son. In fact, that counsel begins earlier when Alma says Helaman should go out and teach the people the following, "things," that would bring, "rest to their souls" (34):

• An everlasting hatred of sin and iniquity (32)
• Repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ (33)
• To humble themselves and be meek and lowly in heart (33)
• To withstand every temptation of the devil (33)
• To never be weary of good works, but to be meek and lowly in heart (34)note how "meek and lowly in heart" is repeated twice in Alma's counsel

These verses together seem to point to qualifications that can lead one to salvation.

In five or six verses, we learn a great deal, however we cannot ignore Alma's words in chapters 36 and 37, where much more instruction and testimony is given that really brings the bulleted items above to life. Not only that, we can then compare the counsel Alma gives to his son Helaman to the counsel given to his other two sons. What is said to each son? What is to be meant by the brief counsel given to one son and a very lengthy counsel to the other? Why did he record counsel to all three to begin with? And then when reading of Alma's toils and troubles, preaching, miracles, political involvement, journeys, etc, a much more complete portrait is painted of the man Alma, from which we can draw many life lessons. Leaving Alma, we read more of Helaman's progress in the faith, and so on. Yes, those few verses in chapter 37 are powerful and insightful, but there is so much more!

If lists and doctrines were sufficient to bring us closer to divinity in this life and salvation in the life to come, the scriptures would be much shorter in length. We would study only the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and several other lists of commands, laws, and counsel. Instead we have before us thousands of pages of stories of individuals, families, towns, and civilizations that illustrate so many ways of broadening our understanding of the important commandments interspersed throughout them.

I have come to appreciate how the scriptures are meant to be read in their entirety, not just a verse here or a verse there. The Book of Mormon is a great example. The culminating event in the Book of Mormon is the literal visitation of the resurrected Jesus Christ on the American continent. So much can be learned from the words the Savior teaches, their placement and order and the various reactions of the people to His words. But we have to ask ourselves why the stories spanning a thousand years preceding and following this event are there (and add to that the Jaredite record). Are there not clear lessons that can be applied from those stories to our time, today?

There are many other verses in scripture that can either be taken out of context or not fully appreciated if we apply the one verse approach to our study and/or overall understanding of the Gospel. It is true there are many beautiful scriptures that consist of one, two or three verses a piece, but there is so much more.

I am convinced that our understanding of the Gospel is not only derived from the doctrines gleaned from individual verses, it is greatly enriched by the full accounts of those who lived long ago, recorded in scripture.