The Gospel is all good news!!... Mostly
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 a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."
Wait! Hold up! He just said don't think he is here to send peace, when I know very well in John he says he is here to bring peace to Earth. I just had a moment where I realized I need to study this quite a bit more, because I just don't quite understand what he is trying to get at here. I even went and looked up in the LDS Scripture Citation index. I found that Harold B. Lee was one to often speak of this scripture and seemed to interpret this as the war on Earth in general that is between good and evil. This war in reality can become a very real part of any of our personal lives, as I'm pretty convinced anybody in the Church has someone in their family who is not active in the Church, or even someone who may hold grudges against them because of differences in belief. Now this doesn't mean you have a "war" in your family, seeing as I have members of my family who just choose differently than me and I love them all the same. But this can be very real for many of us. Sometimes the gospel is not the easiest thing to teach or understand period, and it is important to remember that if something in life is hard for us or we are struggling, Christ said many things to teach us that it will not all be peace, but I believe his peace teachings were mainly about peace inside of us, which is always possible through Him.
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 a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."
Wait! Hold up! He just said don't think he is here to send peace, when I know very well in John he says he is here to bring peace to Earth. I just had a moment where I realized I need to study this quite a bit more, because I just don't quite understand what he is trying to get at here. I even went and looked up in the LDS Scripture Citation index. I found that Harold B. Lee was one to often speak of this scripture and seemed to interpret this as the war on Earth in general that is between good and evil. This war in reality can become a very real part of any of our personal lives, as I'm pretty convinced anybody in the Church has someone in their family who is not active in the Church, or even someone who may hold grudges against them because of differences in belief. Now this doesn't mean you have a "war" in your family, seeing as I have members of my family who just choose differently than me and I love them all the same. But this can be very real for many of us. Sometimes the gospel is not the easiest thing to teach or understand period, and it is important to remember that if something in life is hard for us or we are struggling, Christ said many things to teach us that it will not all be peace, but I believe his peace teachings were mainly about peace inside of us, which is always possible through Him.
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