My nonmo boyfriend remembers more of it than I do and he read it once. He even asked my TBM daughter something about the King Noah story and she didn't know what he was talking about . . . I believe most mormons (especially my parents' age) have never read it through even once. I read it many times out of guilt. Hated every minute.
One time when I read the BoM, I was filled with this deep desire, even a burning inside of me, that was so powerful yet passionate. I contemplated about what it was I was reading (Lehi and his family coming to the America's and having left everything behind in Jerusalem) and began to cry. These Jews with knowledge in reformed Egyptian listened to the commandment of Heavenly Father and left everything behind. Suddenly there was this light that shined down in my room, yea, a light even more powerful than the sun at noon, Mountain Standard Time. Angels, white and delightsome with blond hair and blue eyes, which would have made Hitler proud, came down to minister unto me.
They said in a voice that was as loud as thunder: "What the HELL are you reading, foo'? Put that trash down and get a life!"
Ok that didn't really happen.. I never felt anything =P
It was a tedious read after a chapter or two, but reading a couple verses at a time could be quite uplifting as an affirmation of faith. In other words, it was palatable in small doses, but as a whole it's nearly impossible to swallow.
without good pictures. I kind of liked Freiberg's illustrations in the older editions. All the Lamanite and Nephite guys looked like Chippendale dancers in costumes. But they all had freakishly small heads.
There were a lot of battles and wars that could have made it interesting, but they were really badly written. The clear message, though, was that both sides had these really huge civilizations and massive armies. The great finale battle at the Hill Cumorah, by the Book of Mormon's own accounting, involved armies in the hundreds of thousands. I don't think most Mormons understand the implications of that and how at odds it is with the "limited geography theory" that current mopologists promote as a way of explaining the complete lack of physical evidence for any kind of civilization corresponding to what is described in the Book of Mormon.
Did I find it spiritual? I tried really hard to put myself into a spiritual frame of mind when I read it sometimes. But that had less to do with any content of the book than it did with a desire to see the thing live up to the constant hype. One time I actually started crying while pleading with God to help me overcome my ignorance and really understand the precious truths in the Book of Mormon. Later, I realized that the crying was really due to being busted up about a girl I had a crush on who didn't reciprocate. But that's about as close to any really deep spiritual experience I ever had associated with the Book of Mormon. I guess it helps to be sad from unrequited love and then transfer those emotions to the Book of Mormon in order to get some kind of emotional/spiritual connection with the thing.
Even as a hard-core wannabe TBM, it really bothered me that most of the doctrinal content was just a rehashing of biblical content or popular interpretations of the same.
Joe even put in a dancing-for-a-beheading story involving some woman who was such a hot and sultry dancer that all she had to do was do some fancy moves and some provocative wiggly-jiggly pole dancer action and some powerful guy was willing to order some other guy to be beheaded at her request. It was a complete rip-off of the daughter of Herodias story in the New Testament.
The Book of Mormon is really a pretty awful collection of words no matter how you look at it. I think this is why Mormons have to have so many testimony meetings. They need to really build up the peer pressure and phony consensus to maintain the illusion that the Book of Mormon is something special. You could do a remake of the Emperor's New Clothes story with the Book of Mormon being substituted for the invisible clothes and the story would be even more effective at illustrating how groups can be manipulated into situations where individuals become afraid to speak the truth about what they really see (or don't see).
There were a few portions of it that I thought were spiritual. "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy." Or something like that. "Wickedness never was happiness." Verses like that were spiritual, or pithy maybe.
But most of it I found to be tedious. The constant warfare, spiritual decline after being prosperous cycle, etc., was over the top.
It was down right impossible to read it all the way through but I managed to read it quite a few times as a good morgbot.
But truth be known, I got way more out of the New Testament than I ever, ever got from the BoM.
I love to read, romance comedies, history, The Host 5 times, and many other genres, but the BOM was one of the funniest books I have ever read.
I was in my cubical laughing out loud and people were questioning my sanity, I could not put the book down,I was waiting for the plot.....it never came!
That was the worst read but the funniest because I knew it was a farce, if I had approached it as a serious document I would have stopped after the first page.
I mostly felt good for doing what I was supposed to do and I felt an increase in personal satisfaction when I did get through a large portion. But I also felt bad because I wasn't getting out of it what they said I should.
A lot of it was boring or pointless, and some of it is very good food for thought. Subconsciously though, it troubled me because it was the most correct of any book and the church was totally and completely true but at the same time there was conflicting messages in the book. So I put BoM teachings in one compartment and church teachings in another, while knowing that it was inconceivable that the book was untrue I also had to have and teach beliefs that contradicted it.
These days it seems more like a relic from my past, and on a few occasions I have read some old favorites, and curiously, now that I've finally come to accept the hokum of LDS Inc, it's actually easier to appreciate. Don't ask me to explain...
Nevertheless, in mormonism the feeling of acceptance in the groupthink and confidently fulfilling your assignments is often confused with spirituality. The spirit of conformity and the spirit of God are mutually exclusive.
Has anyone here actually read it all the way through? I was as TBM as they come and a compulsive reader - but I could never survive more than two pages. Two SPECIFIC pages, one with a guy cutting a ton of people's arms off and one with some brothers reuniting. The combination of gore and sap was really satisfying when I was 15. Then I'd close the book and say "There! I read it!"
I read it all the way through about 2-3 times before my mission. On my mission, we had a 10-pages-a-day program, where all the missionaries in any apartment had to gather together each morning and read through at least 10 pages per day. We would take turns reading aloud. It was actually a pretty effective way of ensuring that everyone read each of the "Standard Works" all the way through at least once during their mission.
Some groups of missionaries actually had some pretty interesting discussions as they went through. I learned about a number of inconsistencies and oddities in the Book of Mormon from those discussions.
losinglisa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Has anyone here actually read it all the way > through? I was as TBM as they come and a > compulsive reader - but I could never survive more > than two pages. Two SPECIFIC pages, one with a guy > cutting a ton of people's arms off and one with > some brothers reuniting. The combination of gore > and sap was really satisfying when I was 15. Then > I'd close the book and say "There! I read it!"
+1!!! I never got past the first chapter. I went through all 4 years of seminary, got up at O-dark:30 am, every morning for family scripture reading, and never missed a 3 hour block of hell every sunday, and I never read any of it. I developed an imagination that would put "Walter Mitty" to shame. If you are BIC you don't need to read it. Every story and lesson in it will be told to you and commited to memory before you turn 5.
The first time I read it, I was 16, and felt rebellious since my family was Protestant and I knew my parents wouldn't approve.
I also found it to be easier to read than the KJV Bible I received as a little girl from my Dad. Didn't know at the time there were different translations of the Bible to make reading easier.
I remember having the 'burning in the bosom' feeling. I remember praying on several different occasions and receiving that same feeling. I was certain that I had received a witness from God as promised. Throughout my church experience, this kept me in through doubts and discovered inconsistencies and other Mormons being moral cowards unable to deal with all those doctrinal elephants crapping all over their dogma... I mean, after all, God had witnessed to me, right?
Then, a few years back, I went to my first Iron Maiden concert. And I felt the exact same damn feeling throughout. I doubted the Holy Ghost was testifying to me that Iron Maiden rocked, so I came to the conclusion that this 'witness' was probably more related to a sort of mob mentality, a sense of 'I belong with other people like me' then a divine answer.
So bored. Even while at BYU I would consistently fall asleep after ~5 pages. So eventually I just quit trying and read the professors lecture notes for my studying instead.
Little off topic, but I also remember for the last project of a BoM course we had to memorize one of the "great discourses" in it. He gave us a list, and I picked Abinadi's. So I had to meorize 1 1/2 pages of that drivel. Fortunately I'd been in theater so it wasn't particularly difficult for me to memorize it, but still! Such a stupid assignment for an equally stupid class.
Years ago I was doing a big research paper in school on the Nazis and decided I better read Meine Kampf. So I got a copy and proceeded to read Meine Kampf. If was one of the worst, boring books I ever tried to read. In fact, it was unreadable. The book was so bad I gave up reading it.
I had a simular experience with the Book of Mormon. I set a goal to read it but then it was a constant fight. The book was just a horrible read with crazy stories and names. None of it seemed real. It never inspired me. I have read books I literally couldn't put down but the Book of Mormon is one you have to force yourself to read. It's that bad.
I thought it was one of the funniest religion based books I had ever read! And one of my hobbies is studying different faiths & cults. There were parts where I would have to stop because I was laughing so hard, I had tears running down my face & I couldn't hold the book steady. I kept thinking, "How do they get people to buy into this?". Then again, there's way too many so-called faiths &/or religions out there now that make me think that. Like the 'House of Yahweh' or the 'Nuwaubian's'. Any time women are not considered equals in life or faith, abuse always seems to follow. Ever notice that?
I felt something when I read the BOM. I also found good life advice in there. However, I also conditioned myself to feel this way and tricked myself into believing it. None of it was true and I think I just wanted to feel like I was doing something good and that I was part of a group.
Maybe one day I'll revisit the BOM. If I do, I'm sure I'll feel like most of you feel about it.
I had a variety of feelings when I first read it. Let me backtrack:
I was a kid with ADD. For an ADD person trying to read the BOM is like trying to spit on the moon. So many times I told myself I was going to read it through. So many times I found my eyes going over words and having no idea what I'd just read.
So I kinda gave up. I was a BIC Mormon who really wanted to have a testimony. But the insurmountable block in the process was to read, ponder, and pray about the BOM.
Finally when I was 21 years old and had actually been able to read all the way through a few books I decided to make the assault on gaining a testimony. I opened to first Nephi and started in. It took a long time and a lot of backing up to the top of the page and starting again with ATTENTION this time, etc. I had a variety of feelings. Some of them would be classified as "spiritual" (emotional regarding one's own character etc,) and some would be classified as downright doubting--more than once the idea popped into my head that Joseph Smith had written the whole thing. Of course I put those thoughts out of my head as quickly as I could. I was trying to GAIN a testimony, remember?
Oh, and after I finally made it through to the end I prayed and got nothing, nada, zilch. Mormons, of course, told me that that was my fault, I wasn't really "sincere" enough or other character flaws that they assumed.
I used to feel bad because I would struggle to read the BofM. It was so tedious to get through. I would chastize myself for not having better reading skills.
Then it hit me: I have a grad degree in a reading-intensive program. I've read material much denser and more sophisticated than this. I've read the Silmarillion a few times for fun, and read history books for pleasure. It's not that my reading skills are deficient; it's that reading bad writing is always a chore.
That all of the BofM would be scriptural, testimony delivering, and give us the basis for eternal life within its pages. That is what it was supposed to do. For many of us, we did not receive the goals we were supposed to achieve by reading it.
they come from. You were a convert, right? We were "forced" to read the BofM for seminary. That was when I first read it--as a sophomore in high school.
Reading the BofM for many of us was a "chore" that we were guilted into doing for grades, for salvation, etc., etc., as teenagers. I read the book of mormon because I "had to"--just another of the long list of have tos if you want to have your family forever in the CK. Not a good way of getting people to read the BofM. No wonder my nonmo boyfriend got more out of it than I did--he CHOSE to read it (just for info). Actually, I have several nonmormon friends I worked with in Utah who read it basically so they'd know what they were talking about if the mormons tried to convert them (and they always did). Every one of my nonmormon friends got more out of the book than I ever did and I did read it 5 or 6 times, if not more.
I was hopeful that my "second witness of Jesus Christ" would be just that, a faith-promoting witness that Jesus was/is my Savoir. I read and re-read the section multiple times where He visited the American continent. It was the only portion of the BofM that I could relate to.
The remainder of the BofM was a badly written travel log which was nonsensical and like others here, I have great reading skills, but couldn't make any headway with what was supposed to be a scriptural document of my Mormon heritage.
We read the BoM together as a family when I was a kid. It was sooo boring, except sometimes when I raised an eyebrow because the story seemed too outlandish, but mostly it was boring as hell. Whenever it wasn't my turn to read I'd be thinking about something else, hell, sometimes I was thinking of something else while reading it too. It's the only way to get through the book.