And behold, the word of the Lord came to him [Abram] and said: This will not be your inheritance; But whoever comes out of your own guts will be your heir. Genesis 15:4 The incarnation contains all kinds of mysteries that are not discernible to the viewer. A spirit who has never lived in mortality incarnate can know everything except what it is not to know everything. In mortality, a spirit can come to know night, deprivation, and ignorance. It may encounter lack, absence, desire, and negativity in their abundance (or rather, their partiality). He can learn something about waiting, surprise, uncertainty of all actions – everything, in short, that results from life in time. The intestine is part of this whole. Share the pain of others. To have mercy (from the Latin misericordia – a heart of compassion) means to feel in one`s own intestines the fate of the other, to share worries in a heart that is not one`s own.

To have intestines for another is to recognize a common humanity, a common submission to suffering and death. The intestine is the place of vicarious suffering. In modern Greek, one of the most tender things to say is soft splachno, which means “my dear”; His implication is that your soul is my soul, that you are my inner parts. However, more than any other organ, the intestine combines us the most with the soil. We have, one might say, a long compost pit inside. Our intestines contribute to the earth and remind us daily that we inhabit clay tabernacles (Job 4:19). Jesus Himself made the process of elimination the subject of His teachings, arguing that it is not what enters the body, but what comes out of it that contaminates (Matthew 15:18; Mark 7:15). The excrement in itself does not desecrate, but the words and thoughts that come from the heart. Jesus was not afraid, frankly, but discreetly, to deal with the human incarnation in its fullness. His teaching transcended the traditional laws of cleanliness and hygiene; For example, when the bowels of the Good Samaritan are moved, he looks at what the priest and the Levite, perhaps with ritual terror, might have thought like a corpse (Luke 10:33).19 To have compassion is to take care of things heavy with sickness and death – as all mortals are in some ways.

As humans – a term related to humus (= soil or earth) – we are earthlings who know the soil well. But Amasa did not pay attention to the sword that was in Joab`s hand: then he hit him in the fifth rib with her, threw his intestines to the ground, and never beat him again; and he died. 2 Samuel 20:10 In scripture, the word “intestines” is often associated with compassion or empathy. For example, twisting an old saying may be the best way to get a person`s mind through their stomach. If we feel another theological lesson here, sometimes we have to be hit in the gut. Even the risen Jesus “sighed in himself”; his intestines were filled with compassion for the crowd of Bountiful as he was struck by the painful contrast between the holy innocence of the Nephite children and “the wickedness of the people of the house of Israel” (3 Nephi 17:14). Peterson, however, makes the comparison too strong, since the Son of God also made his tabernacle from such things. Human flesh is not only the opposite of God`s glory, but a powerful sign of His grace and even of our kinship with Him, an incarnate being. The Lord Almighty God came down from heaven to “dwell in a tabernacle of clay” (Mosiah 3:5).

And why? That by enduring the infirmities of his people, “his intestines may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh” (Alma 7:12). In Latter-day Saint theology, the intestines are not opposed to God`s perfection; they are his vehicle.25 In all three passages, the word “intestine” is a translation of the Greek word splagchna (σπλάγχνα), which refers to the internal organs of the body and has been used as a metaphor for deep feelings of tenderness and compassion. While the King James version of the Bible usually translates this word as “intestines,” most other versions use the word “heart” or even skip the metaphor by using words like “tenderness” or “affection.” Even the King James version provides a less literal translation on some occasions, such as when Zechariah, john the baptist`s father, expresses gratitude for “the tender mercy of our God,” where the Greek version says “the bowels of our God`s mercy” (Luke 1:78, NASB Lexicon on biblehub.com). The Scriptures often come to us like messages in a bottle, blown from distant times and places. They bring with them expressions that can sometimes be mysterious to readers of recent days. One of these mannerisms is the frequent use of concrete body language in the description of spiritual states. We read variously fragile hearts and stiff necks, bent knees and belted kidneys, blind eyes and ears cooked squarely, and perhaps the strangest of all, “entrails of mercy.” In the Hebrew Bible, the Greek Septuagint, the Greek New Testament, the King James Bible, and the Scriptures of the Church, the intestines play a central role as a term for deep human feeling, specific moral virtues, and love of God. Such images of viscera are ubiquitous and appear not only in obscure passages, but also in many of the most important discussions about charity, God`s grace, and especially in the Book of Mormon, the Atonement.

The fact that the intestines of all things should be distinguished for special spiritual purposes triggers perplexity, if not aversion, in most of us. But when properly understood, the idea that the intestines can be the vehicle of virtue is poetically and morally powerful. The metaphor of the gut reveals something about how not only religious language works, but also mercy. So, while we are used to talking about a sinking heart, the scriptures feel comfortable talking about restless guts! The Webster Dictionary of 1828 offers the following definition: The literal meaning of these words is intestine, then abdomen, uterus (womb and uterus). As you will see, from the point of view of physiology, there is not much certainty in the use of these expressions; But no less than in modern Eastern languages and even in many Western languages, as they are commonly used. The remarkable sentences, which are in 2. Chronicles 21:18, 19, “Yahweh beat him in his intestines” and “His intestines fell because of his illness” refer to a severe and fatal case of hemorrhoids. Culturally, Mormons tend to be annoyed by the explanation of physical representation, even though our theology teaches the need for human and divine incarnation. Anything that is too concrete in the “physical fullness of the Divinity” (Col 2:9) often makes us, perhaps rightly, nervous. The navel, not to mention the genitals, is already astonishing enough, although our theology allows for the possibility of its eternal continuation.21 It is more about representation and taste than doctrine.

Much of modern thought and literature has dealt with what we might see as the archaeology of humus, an exploration of the extremities of physical bliss and humiliation. Such an exploration can be both invigorating and harsh, profane and profound. As reflections on what it means to be mortal – creatures with intestines – modern thinking deserves the attention of those who have the stomach for such exploration. But the modernist fascination with the proximity of the organs of Eros and excretion22 finds little resonance in Latter-day Saint culture, despite the novels, accounts, and essays of Levi S. Peterson, for example, which are extremely sensitive to the theological and earthly significance of our lower regions.23 Peterson is in line with the Christian grotesque, which extends from the Gospels and Paul`s letters to Dostoevsky and Flannery O`Connor and compassion for waste. Famous. Things that man is made of.