Q: Dear 100 Hour Board,
I know the board is full of ideas, but doesn't hurt to ask for new ones. I struggle reading my scriptures daily. Between work and spending time with the wife/kid sometimes I just don't have any desire to read/study. Is there anything I can do to light that fire again? And another semi-related question, how can I make going to the temple more enjoyable? I try to go every week but sometimes it feels like a shore.
-trying to CTR
A:
Dear Trying,
One of my favorite things right now is listening to Stories From General Conference on the Mormon Channel. They have a free app, so I'm able to listen to them on my phone. (Or you can also listen online at mormonchannel.org.) I usually listen to an episode (~20-30 minutes) while I'm getting ready in the morning so that I can listen, but still be doing something else that doesn't require a ton of concentration. No, it's not technically reading the scriptures (unless you count it from the "latter-day scripture" stand point), but I love the stories and they make me feel more spiritual in general which means I'm more inclined to also actually read my scriptures as well. Plus, sometimes my husband listens to them with me, so maybe your wife would be interested in listening to them with you.
The Church also has scripture stories that you can watch. They're kind of geared towards children, but if you're spending time with your kids, maybe they'd like to watch the scripture stories and you can watch them with them. I have a nephew that watches one every night after his bedtime stories and he loves them. My sister says that she has learned a lot from them too by watching them when her son does.
As far as the temple goes, I have a few suggestions:
1. You don't have to do a session every single time. Rotate what you're doing so that it's more enjoyable. Everything needs to be done, not just endowments.
2. Invite friends to go with you. Sometimes going by yourself or just with your spouse becomes routine. Make it more enjoyable by going with friends and then going out for ice cream or playing games together afterwards.
3. Go to different temples, if you can. If you're in Utah, there are several temples that you could easily go to. I'm not saying do it every time because I think you're technically supposed to go to the temple you're assigned to, but it doesn't hurt to go to another temple every now and then.
4. Set a goal. Instead of going just to go, do some family history and set a date that you want to finish the work by.
5. Spend some of your scripture study time reading about temples. Why do we build them? Why are they important? Why is temple worthiness so important? Etc. Pray for a renewed desire to attend the temple.
6. Write down some of the special experiences and feelings that you have in the temple. Once you determine to do this, you'll start paying more attention to what's happening while you're there. Also, you'll be able to look back and see how going has been a positive thing, not just a routine.
7. Remember WHY you're going. I've never once heard a general authority (or anyone else) command us to go to the temple once a week. There's a reason that you decided to go so often. Think about why that is and remember that when you're feeling less enthusiastic.
Don't discredit your efforts. It sounds like you want to have the desire to read your scriptures and you want to enjoy going to the temple more-- so start with that desire and work on it. I would have LOVED to have a dad that was more interested in the gospel and more interested in being a righteous priesthood leader for our home. Don't lose sight of why it's important, just because it's routine.
- Lavish
A:
Dear trying,
In Sunday school it's Old Testament this year and I'm committed to re-reading the entire Bible. One of the best things that I've started doing was getting and using a study Bible. I've checked out the Harper Collins Study Bible from the library (renewed several times - there's not a huge demand for it). I'm a huge fan of LDS scholarship and FAIR and all of that. But scholars have been studying the Bible for centuries longer than the Church ever existed. There have been volumes written on every chapter of the Bible. I sometimes think that we tend to make the characters in the Bible (well, probably everyone we consider important or inspired) to be very one-dimensional. Almost as if, for example, Potiphar's wife only existed to provide Us with an Example of how to choose to be chaste in the face of temptation. Instead of, you know, a human being with context and culture and motivations. Or the children of Israel being so hard-hearted so that we would have someone to look down and shake our heads at. The Bible is so incredibly complicated the way we think of it and talk about it in Church is like skipping stones over the pond, never really getting fully wet, just hearing the same stories with the same messages always attached to them. Adding some scholarship, to add depth and context to what you can learn and feel by the Spirit, has been hugely rewarding and helpful for likening the scriptures to my own life.
One other thing you might try is to find someone to report to about new things you learned. Tell a spouse, or start a blog (even if they don't listen well or even if nobody reads it). Read a copy of the Book of Mormon "for" someone else (annotating and marking up things you think would be important or meaningful to them). I've done this before and found it very meaningful, both for me and them.
Good luck!
- Rating Pending (who should probably just buy a study Bible. But money!)
A:
Dear CTR,
In addition to my normal scripture study, I've started adding "random scripture study" to the mix. (Brace yourself. This is going to be a terrifying insight into how often I use random number generators and modular arithmetic in my daily life.)
Step 1. Open scriptures.byu.edu.
Step 2. Use a random number generator to pick one of the standard works.
Step 3. Use a random number generator (again) to pick one book in the selected standard work.
Step 4. Scan through the selected book to pick the chapter with the most General Conference talk references. (This is why I like using the scriptures.byu.edu interface.)
Step 5. Use a random number generator (yet again) to pick one chapter in the selected book. (This presupposes that the selected book has more than one chapter. If you end up somewhere like Jude or 4 Nephi, you can skip this step.)
Step 6. Read the chapter that has the most references and read the chapter that you selected with the random number generator. If necessary, read the Wikipedia article on the selected book in order to give you some background as to what is happening in the chapters you selected.
The reason I like "random scripture study" is that I felt like my standard scripture study was mostly hitting the same points over and over again, while there were vast swaths of scripture (particularly in the Old Testament) that I just didn't know all that well. At the same time, I felt that part of the reason I covered the same stories and scriptures repeatedly was because those were what I needed most in my life, so I didn't necessarily want to leave those behind to just plunge into some random series of "begats." "Random scripture study," then, lets me dip into books of scripture I don't know well, and reading the chapter with the most references (in addition to the randomly selected chapter) lets me cover some of the "greatest hits," so to speak, of that scriptural neighborhood. And yes, sometimes I just end up in a random section of Chronicles, but often I learn something interesting and new.
- Katya
A:
Dear friend--
I found that my scripture study and temple attendance became much more meaningful after I got more humble! The Gospel is plain and precious, but just because it's plain doesn't mean we've got it all figured out. Somehow after years of studying the scriptures, I had gotten myself in a rut, feeling that I hadn't learned anything new in a long time. It took me humbling myself and being willing to learn things that didn't exactly fit into my life paradigm for my scripture study and temple work to become a learning experience again. I've learned a lot of things, including a lot of hard things, but they have all been beautiful, too.
One thing that I like to do is study my scriptures with theology texts as companions. For example, I have really enjoyed studying the book of Isaiah with this book open on my Kindle. I underline and make notes of all the chiasms he points out, and that adds a lot to my understanding. I have also enjoyed studying out of this book. Every time, I add cross-references, underline, and write teeny tiny notes in the margins. Often I will copy entire paragraphs from books into my scriptures as they relate. One of my favorite things to add is commentary from the early Fathers--early saints and Church leaders from the first century AD. For example, many early Church leaders had very insightful remarks on the doctrine of the deification of man. That was my topic of study a while back and I have long quotations in the margins of my scriptures. Copying prophetic statements into relevant margins is also helpful. I love looking back at my scriptures and being able to find not just the words of the scriptures, but the words of the prophets of now and Church leaders from so long ago. I feel it adds a lot to my scripture study.
I've recently gotten into the works of John Pratt. I find his articles and work beyond fascinating. He thinks very deeply about the scriptures and that has inspired me, in turn, to think more deeply. Here is a fascinating article about scapegoats, and here is one about Passover. Fun stuff.
The temple gets more exciting the more you start to really dig into the symbolism and ask questions.
Good luck!
- Lexi Khan
A:
Dear trying,
I make a point of reading at least a bit of the Book of Mormon every day to stay grounded in scripture, but there's a lot of uplifting Church history and doctrinal books that, while not scripture, can be a useful, interesting, uplifting part of your reading and study. I recommend the kind of stuff the Mormon Texts Project does. Also, sometimes if I notice I'm getting bogged down in a given book of scripture, I'll switch what I'm reading. (Going from the Old Testament back to more recent scripture for a while seems to re-energize things for me.)
About the temple. I think there's occasionally a tendency to take temple attendance to extremes. While temple attendance is extremely worthwhile, it is not the only extremely worthwhile thing. Family history, non-Church community service, giving some extra love to your home teachees, and any number of other things are competing for your time. Sometimes the temple can crowd too much of this out; I'm sure there are people who go to the temple every week but rarely get involved in service projects or aren't working on their own family history. One of my bishops once told my BYU young married ward members not to go to the temple more than once a month. I can't tell you to go to the temple less, but if you're pressed for time and you're getting to the temple so often that it's becoming rote, maybe it's time to think about diversifying your service. Shift some of your temple time to missionary work or family history or whatever and you might find that both that time and the time you still spend in the temple become more significant.
~Professor Kirke
A:
Dear,
I have trouble motivating myself, too, even when I know that my life feels more manageable when I'm reading regularly. Although it's not as good as a purer motivation based on love of the scriptures or desire to do what's right, I feel pretty great about using HabitRPG to give me a little extra push to read each day. Even a verse is better than nothing.
I do like to do more than that, though, when I can. What works best for me is requiring myself to write something down each time I read. If I finish my chapter or whatever without any thoughts at all, I have to go back and read a little more deeply. Sometimes I write silly observations, sometimes I write about my confusion, sometimes I rephrase a verse or mention how I've seen a principle applied in my own life. It doesn't really matter, as long as I'm doing slightly more than moving my eyes over the text.
I generally find that for the first week or two, my responses are shallow and I have a hard time motivating myself. But after I've settled into the assignment, the thoughts come more easily and I often find I'm writing more than one, and sometimes thinking about those same topics throughout the day. I stop and start a lot, but as long as I pick myself up one more time than I fall, I'm a winner, right? I sure hope so.
-Uffish
A:
Dear Trying,
Try (HA! Get it? Because your name is Trying!) to go into scripture study and temple attendance (anything, really) with a goal or perspective in mind.
For example, lately I've been looking at scriptures, Sunday School lessons, the temple, etc. through the perspective of "Our ultimate goal is to become like Christ and our Heavenly Father." So I'm regularly asking myself, "What can I learn about becoming like Christ and our Heavenly Father through what I'm reading/doing/being taught right now?"
Pick a principle or gospel topic (prayer, prophets, The Fall, grace, etc.) and see how it applies to what you're reading/doing.
Hope that helps,
- Mighty Quinn
comments