Context

For the last couple of mornings, I’ve been studying Lesson 3 of the Gospel Principles manual. (Yes, I know; I’m behind. So what? I read almost the whole thing, last summer.) But before I tell you about that, I’ll have to explain something else: the way I study the scriptures.

The first time I read the Old Testament all the way through was in Seminary. I was determined to get through the entire volume during the course of the school year, and I did—though partly because I couldn’t attend much of Seminary, I’m not sure I got much out of it. Then, during the summer between high school and college, I did the same with the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church—with similar results.

During my freshman year at IU, I took a full-year Institute class on the New Testament. This marked a turning point in the way I studied scripture: my professor, Brother Robert Marrott, was a student of Hugh Nibley and acted like it. He taught me how to get the most out of the scriptures, how to actually study—not just (as he so eloquently put it) allow the light to reflect off the page.

Now, for those of you that know me, you know that I tend to take a yard where someone gives me an inch. Brother Marrott occasionally quoted from the Joseph Smith Translation; I spent $49.00 on two copies of Joseph’s Inspired Revision of the Bible. Brother Marrott suggested a six-color highlighting scheme; I eventually made it up to 43 color combinations, determined to highlight every single verse in my scriptures (which would, of course, be fairly useless). In short, I went crazy, but I was determined to learn.

Because of all this, it’s only natural that when, the next year, I finally got around to studying the Book of Mormon, I decided to do it right. I tried to spend half an hour per day studying it, and I usually did—yet it still took me 2½ years—including 17 months as a full-time missionary—to get through the mere 531 pages. I’d read a verse—sometimes even less—and then switch over to some related scripture, a book of commentary, whatever it took to help me get the most out of that scripture. And despite my toning down a lot of areas of my studies (e.g. no longer using any color combinations, just a few standard colors) in my scriptures, I still try to get the most out of what I read.

So this brings us back to yesterday morning, as I read the second sentence of lesson 3:

When the plan for our salvation was presented to us in the premortal spirit world, we were so happy that we shouted for joy (see Job 38:7

My first impression—which may not be correct—was that the manual was using Job 38:7 to demonstrate that “we were so happy that we shouted for joy”—an interpretation I’ve heard quite a lot, in the Church. As such, I decided to do what I encourage others to do, in Gospel discussions: read the context. Unfortunately, it became quickly apparent that to get any reasonable context, I’d really have to go back to the beginning of chapter 36 and start from there. And thus it was that, for the last two days’ half-hour study sessions, I have been reading the 36th-38th chapters of the Book of Job. And here’s what I’ve concluded:

It’s a lousy reference for that.

To be fair, I went into it suspecting that it might be. But as far as I can tell from the Biblical context, Jehovah is basically putting Job in his place. He’s not pointing out that Job was among “the sons of God [that] shouted for joy,” even though Job ostensibly is; He’s pointing out that Job isn’t the one in charge here.

So let’s take a step back, here: how do we know that we—or Job, for that matter—were among “the sons of God [that] shouted for joy”? The answer, quite simply, is: we don’t. But here’s what we do know:

• We know that God knew at least one of us, before he was born (see Jeremiah 1:5).
• We know that God “made… men before they were in the flesh” (Moses 6:51; see also Abraham 3:22-28).
• We know that God’s “priests were… called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God, on account of their exceeding faith and good works” (Alma 13:2-3); that “[e]very man who has a calling to minister to the inhabitants of the world was ordained to that very purpose in the Grand Council of heaven before this world was” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 365).
• We know that “The fish, the fowl, the beasts of the field lived before they were placed naturally in this earth, and so did the plants that are upon the face of the earth. The spirits that possess the bodies of the animals are in the similitude of their bodies” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation 1:63-4).

Do you see a trend forming here? The truth of premortal life is definitely Biblical, as verse after verse subtly attests. But even the entire Bible doesn’t give enough context to truly understand these verses and all they imply! The context of which I speak, my friends, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the reason so many people fail to understand the Bible is because they don’t have more than the slightest bit of context for it.

Thank you, Gospel Principles, for reminding me of a principle that you weren’t even trying to teach. :-)