Amateurs + Scripture + Social Media

Scripture has new life today because of popular social media and because amateurs are unabashedly putting their experiences with God's word "out there" in myriad different ways. How is this happening with the Book of Mormon? How might our own experiences with the Book of Mormon be creatively shared through the new media?

But first, let's think a moment about how scripture has always had a "multimedia" life. It begins as the spoken word, largely, as prophets and holy men speak to the people of their day. It has then been transformed into text, extending the reach of these messages well beyond their first audiences. But it lives in more than the written word. A grand tradition of adapting scripture to the various arts manifests the vitality of scripture. Indeed, one measure of the success of scripture is the degree to which new generations not only read it and discuss it, but use it to express their own faith, their own experience -- in written expression, and in other ways.

The written word continues strong, but complemented powerfully today by technology and media allowing for (and even encouraging) new forms for scripture and new modes of appreciating and sharing experiences with God's word. In a most surprising way, we find it possible to make something amateur that can have mass distribution.

His hands became real to me..

As a boy in an active Mormon family, I was very much submersed in what I would call Mormon “Oral Tradition”. I was continually surrounded by gospel topics at the dinner table, at early morning seminary, and during church services. I heard beautiful stories of courageous ancestors converting to the restored gospel. I read the Book of Mormon daily, but I read out of a sense of obligation and duty 

rather than a desire to learn and grow spiritually.

While in the Provo Missionary Training Center, I began to gain a sense of spiritual urgency. I soon realized that my spiritual knowledge gained through a faithful family culture might not be enough for the future investigators I might teach, or even myself.

For the first time, I went to the scriptures for answers. I specifically remember reading prophecies about the Savior and was impressed to see that the Atonement was real, even prior to Christ’s Birth.

“Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” Isaiah 49:16

I read the Gospels in the New Testament and I marveled at the words of the Savior.

“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

I opened to 3^rd Nephi and read about Christ’s arrival to the Nephite people.

“Feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet…”

 His hands became real to me. The scriptures were His way of inviting me to know Him in a personal way. Literature has been the avenue for a deeper, more personal level of faith and loyalty to God.