"And out of the ground the Gods formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that should be the name thereof."
Abraham 5:20
I think it shows a particular lack of ego for the Gods to allow Adam to name all the animals, perhaps emphasizing the parent-child relationship going on there kind of like parents giving a child a pet, both because they will love it and also because it will teach responsibility. And I wonder if Adam enjoyed doing it... trying to come up with all those names. :)
I read an article recently about some brothers from Africa who invented a written language to go along with a language that had been passed down only verbally for a long time, and how much it was helping the people to be able to keep records, etc. This reminded me of that because it was talking about how the brothers kind of closed their eyes and thought about the sounds and traced things on paper, and then they would talk and discuss how the alphabet should work, and I wondered how Adam did it. He apparently came with language already built in (though I could be wrong about that. Perhaps he had heavenly teachers for that as well), but how did he decide on animal names... and was he thinking in terms of the whole species of animals, or about individual animals, like "we will call this kind of creature a turtle," "we will call this creature Simon the turtle," or just "We will call this creature Turtle," as a personal name that eventually became a species name?
How does this relate to the gospel? Well, obviously everything relates to the gospel, but uh... maybe what we should think about today is how to take the ego out of our own lives and empower other people to make decisions... or about how much God leaves up to us in our lives, not because he doesn't care, but because he wants us to learn and make choices and maybe some of that responsibility stuff. :) Let's take that freedom and choose to do something good with it. :)
Abraham 5:20
I think it shows a particular lack of ego for the Gods to allow Adam to name all the animals, perhaps emphasizing the parent-child relationship going on there kind of like parents giving a child a pet, both because they will love it and also because it will teach responsibility. And I wonder if Adam enjoyed doing it... trying to come up with all those names. :)
I read an article recently about some brothers from Africa who invented a written language to go along with a language that had been passed down only verbally for a long time, and how much it was helping the people to be able to keep records, etc. This reminded me of that because it was talking about how the brothers kind of closed their eyes and thought about the sounds and traced things on paper, and then they would talk and discuss how the alphabet should work, and I wondered how Adam did it. He apparently came with language already built in (though I could be wrong about that. Perhaps he had heavenly teachers for that as well), but how did he decide on animal names... and was he thinking in terms of the whole species of animals, or about individual animals, like "we will call this kind of creature a turtle," "we will call this creature Simon the turtle," or just "We will call this creature Turtle," as a personal name that eventually became a species name?
How does this relate to the gospel? Well, obviously everything relates to the gospel, but uh... maybe what we should think about today is how to take the ego out of our own lives and empower other people to make decisions... or about how much God leaves up to us in our lives, not because he doesn't care, but because he wants us to learn and make choices and maybe some of that responsibility stuff. :) Let's take that freedom and choose to do something good with it. :)
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