The Book of Mormon

I was born and raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or as most people would say, I am a Mormon. Being born into this environment, the traditions, if you will, of our church were commonplace to me. However, recently I have been thinking what our church must look like from an outsider's perspective and I came to the conclusion that it must appear to be quite odd. I focused my train of thought on the Book of Mormon.

Do people think the Book of Mormon is some sort of handbook on Mormons? A ridiculously long statement of rules and regulations to live by? If so, I can actually see where the confusion comes from. Since people in our church and outside of our church refer to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as Mormons, the name, the Book of Mormon, might lend itself to some serious confusion. The Book of Mormon is moreso similar to a book in the Bible, as in, the Book of Matthew. So you can take the book of Matthew and call people who read and study it as "Matthews". They aren't people that worship Matthew nor are they the people of Matthew that following the rules and regulations contained within it's pages. Calling these people "Matthews" is obviously just a nickname, just as the term "Mormon" is a nickname.

The Book of Mormon in structure and content is very similar to the Bible. In fact the Book of Mormon works in conjunction with the Bible and not as a replacement for the Bible. In our church we read and study both. Within the Book of Mormon you read and learn about a people that started in Jerusalem (around the time of Jeremiah- from the Bible) that traveled away and across the ocean. The book spans hundreds of years and is full of different chapters with different authors, different prophets. Mormon, the guy that the book was named after, was one of the main compilers of the book. Taking all the different writings and putting them together. He plays a major role in the book but he is not the only author.

I have been reading and studying the Book of Mormon and as I have been doing so I have been thinking that there are a lot of people that might not even know what it is or what is inside it. Purely for curiosity's sake I figured I would say, on the surface, what it is. It reminds me a lot of a personal journal of a people from a long time ago. It is fascinating from a historical perspective. I love it for other personal and spiritual reasons.

Mormonism, in my opinion, isn't a widely understood religion. One could google it, but from my personal research in that department the stuff that comes up either makes me angry or just plain sad. So if you're curious at all about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons, and what it even is or does, you are more than welcome to ask, because I'm a Mormon.