How Mormonism Stunted My Social Development

I am socially awkward.

Everyone who knows me knows this.  My coworkers mock my awkwardness.  My girlfriend tells me that it's her least favorite thing about me.  My few friends express frustration when I refuse to join them in the company of people I don't know.   I am in a constant struggle to relate to and interact smoothly with every person I meet who I don't know well and many people that I do know well.  My awkwardness is almost legendary.

I considered titling this post "How Mormonism Made Me Socially Awkward," but that didn't seem quite right.  I believe that the way we develop depends mostly on two things--what happens to us and how we react to what happens to us.  With most things concerning Mormonism, I reacted poorly to my circumstances and exacerbated the problems that were thrust upon me.  I don't intend to blame Mormonism for every negative aspect of my life, but I do blame it for the circumstances which initiated many of those aspects.

So, instead, here is How Mormonism Stunted My Social Development.

2 Nephi 14: Isaiah, the Making-of Featurette

As an exercise, allow me to list the differences between a chapter of Isaiah and a chapter of 2 Nephi.  Here are the things that Joseph Smith's divine inspiration caused him to change from the King James version of Isaiah chapter 4:

Verse 1
-added a comma after the word "day"
-changed the comma after "saying" to a colon
-changed the colon after "apparel" to a semicolon
-removed the comma after "name"


Verse 2
-changed the comma after "glorious" to a semicolon
-removed the words "shall be"
-changed the word "for" to the word "to"

Verse 3
-added the word "that"
-changed a singular subject to a plural ("they" instead of "he") and appropriate verbs ("are" instead of "is")
-removed a comma after "Zion"
-added "he that" for parallelism
-changed "remaineth" to "remain"
-removed a comma after "Jerusalem"
-added the word "even" for emphasis
-changed the colon after "Jerusalem" to a dash

Verse 4
-removed a comma after "judgment"

Verse 5
-changed "dwelling place" to "dwelling-place"
-removed a comma after "day"
-changed the colon after "night" to a semicolon
-changed "the glory" to "the glory of Zion"

Verse 6
-removed the word "for" before "a covert"


How much of this was important?  I'd be willing to bet none of it.  Of the twenty-one changes I caught in my side-by-side comparison, twelve of them were inconsequential punctuation changes.  The few words that were added or removed were not central to any of the ideas being conveyed in this chapter.  Even the pluralized subject in verse 3 doesn't change the meaning of the scripture--it's more stylistic than anything else.  The adding of the words "of Zion" in verse 5 doesn't serve much purpose, either, as I would have expected that phrase to be about Zion anyway because of its context.

So in case nobody's clear on the argument that I've been trying to make for several chapters now, there was no point in copying large chunks of Isaiah into the Book of Mormon except to serve as filler, to pad to the word count, or to lend credence to the Book of Mormon by linking it to the Bible.  This is not a superior translation.  It is the same translation with slightly altered details.

And when I say there was no point, I mean to say that I have concluded that the Isaiah sections of the Book of Mormon are evidence of the book being the words of a man and not the words of God.

They're also easily the most boring parts of the Book of Mormon.  (Yes, worse than Omni.)   

Mormon-Themed Memes 2

Chastity and Perspicacity

When I was a member of my ward's Teachers' Quorum, my quorum adviser told us a story once concerning the law of chastity that really stuck in my memory.  And because of a casual conversation at work a few nights ago, I revisited that memory and discovered--not for the first time--that something I'd been taught in church was utter crap.

Follow the Prophet

In an email she sent out to the family this week, my sister mentioned a charming story about her two-year-old son.  She said that he liked the primary song "Follow the Prophet" and that he'd been wandering around the house most of the day singing it.  Apparently he got the melody down pretty well but his pronunciation left a little to be desired.  She said that his vowels were mostly right but that he seemed to use whatever consonants he felt like, making the whole song sound like complete, adorable gibberish.  I didn't find the story particularly adorable.