Mosiah 12

Mosiah 12:17-18 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; But the seventh day, the sabbath of the Lord thy God, thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; I am generally good about not working on Sunday but the comment here about your servants not working is interesting—how did people who rely on servants to prepare their food get by on Sunday? That thought led me to the question of how we prepare our food and Betsy often does it, but when we talk about division of labor in our family, my official work is to go to the office an earn money and Betsy's work is taking care of the kids. Seemingly as part of that, there is some home care and meal preparation. So if preparing meals is part of her job, should I request to e allowed to prepare the meals on Sunday? If I do it, it's service but if she does it, it's work.

Mosiah 12

Mosiah 12:19 And they began to question him, that they might cross him, that thereby they might have wherewith to accuse him; but he answered them boldly, and withstood all their questions, yea, to their astonishment; for he did withstand them in all their questions, and did confound them in all their words. When they had Abinadi, they questioned him to try and get him to blaspheme. It's funny to me that the justification for death that they most naturally moved toward was religious. What would it be like to live in a society where the capital offenses were all religious in nature? I worry it might be a little like the Salem community when they were hunting of witches. 12:26 I say unto you, wo be unto you for perverting the ways of the Lord! For if ye understand these things ye have not taught them; therefore, ye have perverted the ways of the Lord. if you understand something and do not teach it, you are perverting it? Or does that only relate to priests and gospel principles? And what if you just don't understand it and are teaching it wrong? But he appears to be saying (at least to these priests) that because they are priests, they have an obligation to understand these things. That seems to very naturally carry over to basically all priesthood holders—we are probably obligated to both understand and teach doctrine.

Mosiah 12

Mosiah 12:15 And behold, we are strong, we shall not come into bondage, or be taken captive by our enemies; yea, and thou hast prospered in the land, and thou shalt also prosper. Here, they use the fact that he has prospered as justification for his perceived righteousness. I think we do this often. Surprisingly, thee political left is more likely to make the opposite determination—where the political right stems from a Protestant Christian background, which prizes hard work above dependence, and often associates material success with that hard work and God's implied approval—the political left uses wealth acquisition as a clear example of greed and a lack of compassion. Focusing on the more convenient sin, I suppose, the one on sloth and envy, the other on greed and gluttony. The problem is that scripturally, we have clear examples of God blessing the righteous and taking credit for their success and other clear examples of God indicating he had no hand in a wicked person's material success. End lesson: you can't judge a man by his possessions.