Joseph Janson: Who is Christ?

So to continue my efforts to write down my thoughts for my class, I bring you to what I read earlier today in Matthew. It's in chapter 11 verses 28-30. Christ invites those in His day, but also us in these scriptures. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." We've learned so much in our New Testament class just after this small amount of time. My wife every class says how much she loves our professor. I enjoy it because he helps me see how much symbolism is missed by us, especially in the Church where we hear these stories so much it becomes too common to us. We were discussing recently when Jesus turns water into wine. This small miracle shows how Jesus can really take our dirty faults like the dirty water and turn us into pure wine. And it's by our faith this happ...

This week we are getting more into the actual teachings of Christ. Before we were covering things where Christ never even spoke! The first words we hear Him speak were when he was a young boy in the temple, and then when he spoke to John the Baptist when He was baptized. I'm coming to learn we don't have very much information or detail on His actual life and sayings. We are limited, at least now. Now in Matthew 5:13, the Lord is giving what we know as the Sermon on the Mount. He says, "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." Honestly this is a little confusing to me and this analogy has never been clear to me. What my impression is, is that our covenants and priesthood can be taken away from us if we are not faithful and keeping commandments, and when it's taken away this is like us "losing our savor." ...

So I found a pretty interesting scripture today when I was doing some reading in the New Testament I am studying. Recently I've just been thinking a lot about where I am spiritually, and it is sometimes an anxiety filled feeling for me, but also reading scriptures consistently again is very calming to me simultaneously. I was reading in Matthew 10:34-36, and this made me rethink many of Christ's sayings. I get this feeling that we are taught as kids in very simple ways, which obviously is very useful and necessary in its time, but there is always a time to move from milk to meat. This scripture made me wonder a bit what Christ really meant, and I realized you could seriously spend forever studying this stuff. It is so packed with historical context, imagery, and insights that can't be gained by a "Harry Potter" reading style as I like to call it. Christ says in this scripture, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but ...

So I know I recently just wrote something, but since it's the beginning of the semester I am writing again to get ahead of the game. Just to get my semester schedule on track. I'm realizing I'm gonna have a hard time, because my classes are freakin hard. I spent way too long on my chemical engineering homework yesterday, because well, it was ridiculous. It certainly stretches me, most homework in high school I didn't try that hard because it wasn't hard to me. This stuff now... is freakin difficult. Anyways, I'm realizing I need to really manage my time, and part of this will be to reinstate scripture study, which my religion class is helping to do a lot. I love the professor and I've taken him before. But the scripture study aspect will help me a lot. It's gonna take some uncomfortable time to get myself to study again. I say all this because for the reading  I was reading in Matthew 2:13, where Joseph, the husband of Mary the mother of Christ, is tol...

Hello everybody! It is your friendly neighborhood Joseph again. I wanted to share just a little bit of what you may find interesting or not, but I hope it at least makes you a little happier. I am in a New Testament class at BYU and I want to share what I learn over the next few months from it. It's tough do this sometimes. I feel I get disconnected in many ways as time goes and I tend to get lazy. This disconnection can come to mean me feeling disconnected from God, which in the short run doesn't seem bad, but in the long run can be extremely depressing. But I read some today in the New Testament that can relate to that, and really to all of us. I read in John 1 today in verse 10-11. It speaks of Christ being in the world; "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Can we even really imagine what that means? I think we all know how it feels to not be included, like not chos...