Fact vs. Fiction

This past week I read Homer’s The Iliad for my Western Humanities class. It was my first time reading it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved reading about Achilles, Hector, and the Greek Gods and Goddesses. While I was reading, I thought of it like a story passed down from one generation to the next. To me, it seemed as though it was only a legend, and not based upon factual events. As we discussed the epic during class, I came to realize that most of the story contained true pieces of Greek history during the time of the Trojan War.

As I was reading The Iliad, I was also studying The Book of Mormon for my religion class. Like The Iliad, I fell into the pattern of thinking of the stories of The Book of Mormon as only stories. By reading my Book of Mormon Manual, listening to my Professor, and praying, I know that they are not merely stories made up to teach lessons, but are factual events that truly happened.

With the world as it is today, with millions of books in print, and information so readily available on the web, it is vital that we are able to differentiate between fact and fiction. I am grateful for the information that is available to me, and even more grateful for the knowledge that not everything out there is true and that I need to be cautious.