Spiritual Insights...and other stuff

Have you ever met anyone who just thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread? Let's be honest, the best place to find those people is the high school weight room. Okay, yeah, that was an over-generalization, but no, I'm not talking about the typical football-playing meatheads that we all know and love, I mean a real, king-size, full-blown tool, somebody who thinks they're greater than God Himself. Ever met somebody like that? Whether you have or not, this post is for you. ;) There are several such egomaniacs found within the pages of holy writ, one of which I encountered recently in  Alma 9:6 , who asks the following question: "...Who is God, that sendeth no more authority than one man among this people, to declare unto them the truth of such great and marvelous things?" Though the verse says "they" said this, I imagine some individual was the first to voice those words, for which reason I'm going to refer to said individual as ...

Lately, I've been reading the Book of Mormon backwards. Moroni 10:33 to 1 Nephi 1:1. I don't know what brought me to do it, perhaps I needed to add little seasoning to my study. (I decided to read the individual verses the normal way, fyi. Reading every word backwards seemed ill-advised.) In today's reading, a few verses in Helaman 7 caught my attention. Nephi is on his tower calling Zarahemla to repentance. He bemoans their wicked state and asks, "Why has [God] forsaken you?" He subsequently answers this question himself: It is because ye have hardened your hearts; yea, ye will not hearken unto the voice of the good shepherd; yea, ye have provoked him to anger against you.¹ Nephi declares that the "good shepherd" is angry at the people of Zarahemla, who, by metaphorical implication, are His "sheep." Who is the good shepherd? Jesus Himself said, "I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep ."² Diving into the metaphor, we find these...