Condemnation

And your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief, and because you have treated lightly the things you have received—which vanity and unbelief have brought the whole church under condemnation. And this condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion, even all. And they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments which I have given them...

Doctrine & Covenants 84:54-57

This is not metaphorical story of some distant people. Those children of Zion include us. President Benson mentioned this verse in his famous talk, Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon, saying that we are even yet under God's condemnation for having treated it lightly. I know I've felt pretty well condemned for it. Studying consistently has always been very hard for me, so I'm lately trying to read it more regularly and in larger amounts than I ever have, and I'm doing (relatively) well so far.

Though studying the Book of Mormon is a great start, though, it isn't enough to solve the problem. President Benson said that in order to escape condemnation, we must flood the earth with the Book of Mormon. My Google search for President Benson's talk happened to find for me an excellent example of the ideal attitude: there is a man in Indianapolis blogging about his frequent attempts to give out copies of the Book of Mormon. Frequent, in this case, means at least once every few days, and he seems to be remarkably successful.

I suppose it's not really that remarkable, though, when you consider whose book he is giving out. God isn't the sort to get tired of our pathetic efforts and just shake his head as we fail. He will help me to stop taking the Book of Mormon lightly, for both my own sake and the sake of all mankind. (Keeping this blog—especially publicly—is actually a great step toward that end. I never would have made my faith this visible even very recently.)