{"id":37554,"date":"2018-02-05T05:00:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T10:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=37554"},"modified":"2018-01-08T06:49:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T11:49:15","slug":"gods-demand-that-we-suffer-reading-nephi-1717-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2018\/02\/gods-demand-that-we-suffer-reading-nephi-1717-22\/","title":{"rendered":"God’s Demand That We Suffer – Reading Nephi – 17:17-22"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here.<\/a>\u00a0To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the comments below.<\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

I Nephi 17:17-22<\/a><\/p>\n

Considering their security concerns, it\u2019s hard not to be sympathetic to Laman here. The Lehites have just undergone eight years of hardship before finally coming to the coast\u2014there\u2019s no visible way of continuing. I suspect that there were fishers and others in boats nearby, but even so, trans-oceanic passage was undoubtedly unheard of. There\u2019s no reason for Laman and the others to even suspect that there\u2019s land on the other side of that incomprehensible expanse of water. Mormon sci-fi authors might offer a kind of analogy. Sure, we all know about NASA and SpaceX and the like. But can we imagine our prophet declaring that he\u2019s received revelation to build a space ship and travel to another planet? We\u2019ve no reason to even suspect that there\u2019s another inhabitable planet within traveling distance. I don\u2019t care what kind of faith you have, Nephi\u2019s idea on the face of it is loony.<\/p>\n

In this context, it\u2019s telling that Nephi immediately precedes his account of the attempted Laman-et-al coup with this passage about God initiating the shipbuilding. He focuses on two key themes: If you keep the commandments you prosper (and if you don\u2019t you won\u2019t); and once you reach the promised land,\u00a0then<\/em>\u00a0you\u2019ll know that I the Lord God brought you out of Jerusalem. The latter in particular is conspicuous. Again, if we take the narrative at face value, then Laman and Lemuel and the others have had multiple divine manifestations, multiple opportunities to know<\/em> that it is the Lord that initiated their exodus and has sustained them during their travels. I\u2019m tempted to launch into a counter-narrative that makes rationally plausible Laman\u2019s witnessing angels and hearing the voice of the Lord and experiencing the various miracles, and yet disbelieve that it was in fact God commanding them to cross the ocean. Instead, I\u2019ll simply note that this odd placement in the narrative of God\u2019s declaration that once they\u2019ve reached the promised land, then<\/em> will they all know that God has brought them there from Jerusalem\u2014if nothing else, it signifies that the decision to get in a boat and travel to the New World remained a controversial move in the older Nephi\u2019s day. Whatever else is taking place, Nephi is clearly seeking political unity, which requires the trip from Bountiful to Nephi to have been inspired. This in turn signals that the Promised Land was not a land flowing with milk and honey. There are only two such flowing lands mentioned in the scriptures: Jerusalem and Bountiful.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting that here Laman employs the epithet that Nephi is like his father<\/em>. Bountiful isn\u2019t Jerusalem, but it\u2019s another place of permanence and prosperity where they might enjoy their possessions and be happy. This line makes it easy to read Laman as a mere hedonist (perhaps because Nephi\u2019s intentionally portraying him that way with the words he has Laman say). I think it\u2019s more valuable to read Laman as instead taking a position like Aristotle: happiness and flourishing require a minimum level of one\u2019s needs being met. Grinding poverty or chronic lack of food or wandering in the wilderness for eight years without stability or even fires\u2014none of these are conducive to living in happiness. Maybe Laman really is murmuring about his lack of luxury. But he\u2019s surely also murmuring about their lack of basic necessities.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, I don\u2019t think that the proper response is to challenge Laman on this front. In fact, I think he\u2019s actually right. The gospel is<\/em> hard\u2014and not in the abstract way in which today we get online and tell our ideological foes to suck it up because the gospel is hard. Rather, the gospel is hard because it literally demands<\/em>\u2014at least at times\u2014that we sacrifice and live at a level below what one can reasonably claim is necessary for an adequate life<\/em>. Lehi and Saraiah gave up far more than just their possessions when they left Jerusalem. In addition to their health and comfort, they gave up their family unity, much of their heritage and traditions and community, any notion of stability, any local notions of what the good life was. Ezra Booth wasn\u2019t delusional in his recognition of Mormonism\u2019s extreme lack of polish and Zion\u2019s lack of display of any sign of bounty or utopia. Our pioneer ancestors sacrificed far more materially than we do today, and the poor back then suffered far more than our poor today. Black members were asked to give up far more than merely holding the priesthood pre-1978 (and continue to be asked to give up more than others with whom they share the pews). Gay members are asked for far more than mere celibacy. The demands for sacrifice are not<\/em> symmetric and as far as I can see there\u2019s nothing fair about them. Failing to recognize this point\u2014perhaps in our Nephionic zeal to defend the claim that God in fact is <\/em>leading us\u2014we can easily misrecognize the actual situation that mortality places us in, miss what our covenants demand of us, and miss the humanity of our sisters and brothers who struggle.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it\u2019s a mistake to make too much of the asymmetry. Nephi\u2019s personality and certainly his outlook were much more conducive to weathering the trials that Lehi\u2019s family underwent\u2014that is, it might well have been harder both psychologically and physically for Laman than it was for Nephi\u2014but it\u2019s romantic nonsense to think that Nephi didn\u2019t likewise sacrifice. Just as it\u2019s nonsense to think that men don\u2019t likewise suffer with the asymmetric burden we place on women in the church today. Simply because one\u2019s suffering is less than another\u2019s is no reason to dismiss that suffering.<\/p>\n

Just as with Nephi and Laman, some of the sacrifice and suffering we undergo occurs because God demands it of us. And frequently it occurs on account of our reaction to God\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n

The rhetoric of the older Nephi is often laced with bitterness, as I think it is here. I can taste the remnants of Nephi\u2019s bitterness at the actions of Laman and Lemuel. Nephi, in addition to offering an ethic that makes our sacrifice of happiness and life worthwhile, seems also to retreat from this world and its difficulties and inevitable disappointments. I suspect that the intense conflict experienced at Bountiful\u2014let alone the levels of conflict seen in the Promised Land following Lehi\u2019s death\u2014is not what the young Nephi had in mind when the angel told him back near Jerusalem that he would become a ruler and a teacher over his brethren. Nephi suffered.<\/p>\n

Which makes me wonder: given the poignant levels of disappointment through which we\u2019re called to wade in this life, how do we live as faithfully as Nephi while still affirming this world (and not, as he seems to have done, retreating from it)? How do we make such faith more than an ideal to strive toward? How do we obtain the goods of the covenant as well as the goods of the world in which we are and will be immersed for the duration of our lives?<\/p>\n

We get the briefest of glimpses into Nephi\u2019s soul here. He wasn\u2019t impervious to his brother\u2019s criticism. It depressed him. Exceedingly. Nephi often paints himself two dimensionally\u2014a flat, heroic figure. But the reality of the much richer Nephi is unmistakable.<\/p>\n

The last word of verse twenty-two is a gem. Despite our movies and paintings, this is not a scene where Nephi, working alone, confronts an unruly mob of brothers and in-laws. As we\u2019ve already seen, and as we will see again on the ocean and again in Nephi, there are factions. Nephi\u2014inevitably\u2014was an us<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t care what kind of faith you have, Nephi\u2019s idea on the face of it is loony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37554"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37581,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37554\/revisions\/37581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}