seminary

Phew!  Another week done with seminary.  I got fractionally more sleep this week than I have the other weeks I have taught, so maybe I'm getting better?  The trouble is that I seem only to be inspired with good ideas after midnight...  I can do all the reading, and all the preparation I can do early in the day, but it isn't until it is late at night that I seem to finally crystallize upon what exactly I am going to teach.
This week was OK.  My lessons never go as well as I envision, but I guess that's life.

I can say that I get really frustrated with the King James Version of the bible that we use in our church.  I really love many things about it, but the language is just so inaccessible to modern ears!  My students are smart kids, and they can figure out what is being said, but, and this is definitely true for me as well, so much mental energy is being spent on deciphering the wording, that there is little mental energy left for really absorbing what is being said, or for eliciting much of an emotional response.  It's too bad!  I spend too much time translating what is being said in a particular passage, that there isn't enough time left for really discussing doctrinal issues which really is the point of the scriptures anyway, isn't it?  But how can you understand the doctrinal issues and how the Bible helps us to understand the Gospel, if these kids don't actually read from and really understand the text?

I have a well-worn copy of the NIV study bible, and I really, really love it.  I use it in our personal family scripture study and for the purposes of making the bible accessible, understandable, and interesting to my kids, it is about 1,000% better than the KJV.  The KJV is dry, difficult language.  Some books are much better than others, but too much of it is (in my opinion) frankly boring to read.  Or just plain opaque.  It is not easy to really feel the spirit and connect emotionally to the characters in the bible when you are struggling to stay awake reading it, or else are so bogged down in the language that you are merely reading words and not absorbing any of the content.

I have whined to Ben about this ad nauseum over the past few weeks as I've tried to help these kids connect with the KJV, and really feel the power in the stories.  If only I could use my NIV bible!!  My students would get SO much more out of it, and I bet their enthusiasm for reading the scriptures (and the spiritual benefits therefrom) would increase tremendously.

If I had the ear of one of the general authorities, this would be my #1 issue I'd love to discuss with him, no doubt.  But, I'll keep try, try, and trying again.