Experiences in Mormonism and Mormon Culture: Questions Answered

This book is available at http://www.amazon.com/Experiences-Mormonism-Mormon-Culture-Questions-ebook/dp/B007KOZWH0/ref=la_B007MNASV4_1_21?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405143611&sr=1-21

 

 

Brent Maynard is someone who has dedicated his life to the study and practice of Mormonism. In this book he explains a lot about the misunderstandings that people tend to have by answering some commonly asked questions.

This book gives several details into the religion itself as well as the culture that has built itself around it. Brent Maynard uses personal experiences and his studies to explain what this Mormonism thing is really all about. Brent Maynard also dives into many of the more controversial topics of the church such as race, homosexuality, gender, authority, and evidence of the Book of Mormon.

Short, easy to read, and full of detail, this book is a good introduction to the Mormon culture. Brent Maynard points out many of the positives and negatives of the culture to try and give the reader a balanced point of view.

Why "Magic" Gets Censored and Why People Should Just Lighten Up

It is curious to many that one of the most banned books in contemporary literature is also one of the most innocent.  While there are certainly a lot of dark things in Harry Potter, is it really worth all the effort many groups have put forth to ensure Christian youth do not read the book?

So to look more closely at the issue why do fantasy books get banned in the first place?  The Bible clearly states that sorcery and witchcraft are sins.  Therefore books that deal with sorcery and witchcraft, or even just mention magic, often find themselves on lists of banned books.

But why is the Bible against magic?  One crucial thing that you have to remember about the Bible is that it is a historical text that was written little by little by several different authors in several different time periods of the ancient world.  Magic had a very different meaning to the ancient Hebrews than it does to modern popular culture.

The Hebrews encountered magic while they were enslaved in Egypt.  The magicians of Pharaoh's court were trained priests of various gods and goddesses who used trickery and deception to make it look as though they had powers granted to them by the gods.  The Hebrews also encountered magic when they returned to the Promised Land, those using magic did so by calling on ghosts and spirits, gods and goddesses, and even demons and devils including Satan.

To use magic meant a person had to seriously violate the Hebrew law which forbade worshipping other gods, having images of those gods, and bearing false witness, since magic doesn't really exist.  Soothsaying also made Hebrews nervous since it was the act of prophesying with power other than that granted by their God, which to them meant that it had to be coming from other gods or the devil.

It was not so much magic itself that the Hebrews were against but the sources of magic.  The Hebrews had prophets and priests who fulfilled the same roles that sorcerers did in other societies, yet when the prophet healed someone it was not through magic, it was by the power of God.  What's the difference?  The difference is the legitimacy of the source of power.  The prophets, getting their power from the god of the people could be trusted and holy, while the witches, getting their power from other strange gods could not be trusted and were therefore evil.

So, how does this apply to modern and contemporary fantasy literature and movies?  For the most part, it doesn't.  Going back to the example of Harry Potter, the professors of Hogwarts never mention any Pagan gods or rituals, in fact they celebrate Christmas every year.  The power source for magic is the blood of the wizard, religion is simply ignored throughout the series.

Other books that get looked down upon for having magic are actually written by some of the great Christian thinkers of the 20th Century and teach Christian principals!  The primary example of this is the Chronicles of Narnia series by CS Lewis.  His main character, Aslan, is basically Jesus Himself but described as a lion.  CS Lewis used his story about magic and fantasy to teach important Christan doctrines.

Lord of the Rings also has a lot of parallels with Christian doctrine and was written by a Catholic.  It is a controversy to this day how much Tolkien did on purpose and how much people are over thinking it.  Here are a few examples.  Gandalf sacrificed himself for the quest but returns to life more powerful than ever.  Frodo carries a burden of evil that only he can rid the world of.  Aragon, after winning the final battle, leads the people in a peaceful era for 1000 years.  The themes of overcoming evil and temptation, of Christ's sacrifice, and the millennium, and others are present.

The popular cultural concept of magic that we have is very different from what magic was considered in Biblical times and is much more Disney than devil and in many cases it is even pro-Christian.  Ironically authors don't mind being banned as it increases their sales by bringing more attention to their work.  Kind of defeats the purpose of banning books in the first place.

"Older than the Bible"

I love history.  Writing doesn't really pay the bills for me, I'm not a best selling author, so I make my living by teaching history.  An essential part of studying history is to look at both primary and secondary texts.  A primary text was written during the time period that is being studied verses a secondary text is written more recently about events that happened during the time period.

When reading and researching about certain primary texts, especially if they have spiritual themes, a common boast is that they are "Older than the Bible."  In fact, some reviewers go on so much about how old the text is that they fail to even mention what is even in the text in the first place.

Are there texts that are older than the Bible?  Certainly there are, in fact saying that something is older than the Bible isn't very impressive.  What people forget about the Holy Bible is that it isn't technically a book.  The word Bible means library, which is a collection of books.  These books were written by several different authors living in several different time periods.  The Holy Bible was not complied into it's present form until after AD 325 making the Bible itself less than 1700 years old.  1700 years ago is ancient by it's not very ancient.  Many books from the Sumerians, Chinese, Indians (People from India, not Native Americans) Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, and other civilizations were written before that time.

(Other important questions to consider, how and why was the Bible complied the way that it is and what took so long?)

The age of the Bible is not as significant as the ages of the individual books in it.  The five books of Moses or the Torah is the oldest part of the Bible.  These books are the first five in the Old Testament.  Are there books that are older than the Torah?  Yes there are.  The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving literature in the world; it is a little less than 5000 years old.  Moses was not even born for almost another 2000 years.  Even so, the Torah being about 3400 years old is older than the vast majority of literature ever written.

So, why is age of spiritual texts important in the first place?  To be first is an important concept with us humans.  The ancient world was far more connected than most people realize.  Being able to say that something was written first gives the document a sense of legitimacy.  "Our religion thought of it first and you were influenced by us," is what many people are trying to claim when they say that something is older than the Bible.  For some Christians this idea is deeply troubling and for others it is not.

Why does it bother some Jews and Christians that other cultures' teachings may have influenced the Bible?   For many people who have been taught that the Bible was written by God, finding out that it was written by men is hard to take.  Then finding out that other men wrote almost the same thing makes some people question their faith.

Why doesn't it bother many Jews and Christians that the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story that is similar to the account of Moses?  Simply put, they have faith that Moses was a prophet.  Moses wrote about the flood long after it happened, at the time the Epic of Gilgamesh was written it was practically a recent event.  In fact most cultures have a story about the major flood, some of which are even more similar to Moses' account than the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Did the flood actually happen?  That is a matter of faith.  Floods happen all over the world every year.  It would truly be strange if there weren't flood disaster stories from all over the globe.

Even though there are many sources of literature that can claim that they are older than many of the books in the Bible, please do not forget to do your own research. (Yes, even double check me.  You'll see that I've done a lot of rounding)  Just because someone says a book is a certain age doesn't mean that the person isn't mistaken or lying.  There is currently a movement within the dying sects of Zoroastrianism to prove that Zoroaster invented Monotheism, since being the first would give their religion more legitimacy and possibly save it.  It has long been the tradition however that Zoroaster did not live until around 600 BC, making him about 600 - 700 years younger than Moses.  In my opinion, trying to make Zoroaster more ancient instead of letting what he wrote speak for itself belittles what he had to say about God.

Another example is a text that I am currently reading, the Bhagavad - Gita is believed by many to be 5000 years old.  I can say with absolute certainty that this book could not possibly be 5000 years old, there are too many references to cultural concepts that did not exist until much later.  The book may have existed in some form, a radically different oral form perhaps, but it could not have been anything like it is now.  Most historians tend to think that it is only 1500 years old, making it younger than the Bible.  I am willing to estimate that it could be 2000 years old.

At the end of the day how much does the age of something matter?  It is interesting to me to look at the age of something and marvel at its impact on the world and the fact that it has survived for us to read today.  However, the age of spiritual text does not influence my spiritual beliefs.  There are much more important things.  The most important question would be, what does the text say about God?