Second-Generation Ship --1 Ne 17:17

"And when my brethren saw that I was about to build a ship, they began to murmur against me, saying: Our brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship; yea, and he also thinketh that he can cross these great waters."

There was a very specific reason Laman and Lemuel were wary of building a boat.

Before he was a prophet, when his first four sons were still only boys, Lehi had claimed divine inspiration for the first time. He had been doing well trading along the camel routes from Arabia to Egypt--and then one day he came home and announced that God wanted him to build a ship and break into the lucrative trade in cedar from Lebanon.

Lehi threw his energy into the project with a religious intensity, and the boys got excited like they'd never been before. But getting the right permits and finding the right workers was hard; expenses built up fast and Lehi had to take out big loans; the ship almost didn't get built and almost as soon as the ship was built, there was a market collapse in Egypt and not much room for Lehi in the cedar trade anymore; finally, after a bad storm in the harbor, the ship sank.

It was the family's worst disaster. Lehi had to work extra hard and take long trade trips during Laman and Lemuel's early teenage years to bring the family fortunes back again.

So when Nephi told them God wanted another boat, Laman and Lemuel mocked him. To them, memories of the first boat meant that God didn't really get involved in nautical issues.

In Nephi's memory, though, the first boat was associated positively with his father's early faith. And it set a precedent for God's later command.

The difference between the brothers was in how they interpreted their early life experience.

(A variation on this story is also told in which the first shipbuilder is not Lehi, but Joseph Smith, while the brothers are not Laman, Lemuel, Nephi, and Sam but Warren Parrish, David Whitmer, Brigham Young, and Wilford Woodruff. In that version, the ship is not a ship, but rather the Kirtland Bank.)

Knowledge as a Club --2 Ne 28: 4

"And they shall contend one with another; and their priests shall contend one with another, and they shall teach with their learning, and deny the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance." (2 Ne 28: 4)

Our faith, though strongly advocating education, is inherently suspicious of institutionalized intellectualism. Why?

Because knowledge is light--but all too often we treat it as power.

It is our faith's sad experience that people who see themselves as having power often tend toward unrighteous dominion and abuse.

The Jaredite Voyage and the Manti Temple: Ether 6: 2-3

"For it came to pass after the Lord had prepared the stones which the brother of Jared had carried up into the mount, the brother of Jared came down out of the mount, and he did put forth the stones into the vessels which were prepared, one in each end thereof; and behold, they did give light unto the vessels.

And thus the Lord caused stones to shine in darkness, to give light unto men, women, and children, that they might not cross the great waters in darkness." (Ether 6: 2-3)

When Jaredites left the terrestrial land of Bountiful to be driven by the winds toward the fullness of the promise, they had to travel in special ships which were designed to serve also as temples. It was for this reason that the Lord made the brother of Jared ask for his hand to touch the stones and fill them with light instead of simply doing so on his own initiative: a temple cannot be sanctified by God without a dedicatory request by an authorized human servant of God. It is also in memory of this ancient temple that the Lord later called shipbuilders to construct a roof for the temple in Manti: the first created after the Saints had been driven from initial destinations to an unexpected promised land.

Sealing--Hel. 10: 7

"Behold, I give unto you power, that whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus shall ye have power among this people."

What the gospel asks us is to live on earth in ways that we want sealed in heaven, and through the Atonement to loose ourselves on earth from what should not be sealed to us in heaven. Exaltation is not an entirely separate state of being: it is a sanctification, purification, and endless continuation of what the deepest and most basic gospel principles allow us to build on earth.

Have prophets with sealing power been waiting for thousands of years to seal up the whole earth? No, I think they've understood that their role is to prepare and perhaps to seal pieces. The Messiah, when he returns, will be responsible for sealing everything, and people in the millennium will help him.

A Beautiful Mormon Heresy -- 3 Ne 27: 27

"And know ye that ye shall be judges of this people, according to the judgment which I shall give unto you, which shall be just. Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am." (3 Ne 27: 27)

Mattathias used to say that the use of "I am" in this verse is the same as in John 8: 58 and by extension Exodus 3: 14.

To those who can see this layer of meaning, it becomes an expression of what is considered by mainstream Christianity to be one of our most radical and despicable heresies.

May we never cease to be such heretics!

The Opposite of Pride -- Alma 4: 12

"Yea, he saw great inequality among the people, some lifting themselves up with their pride, despising others, turning their backs upon the needy and the naked and those who were hungry, and those who were athirst, and those who were sick and afflicted." (Alma 4: 12)

I posted recently on the question: "what is the opposite of faith?" In that case, doubt, fear, and rebellion are only a few of the possible responses. The opposite of pride is more commonly accepted as humility, and yet what does humility mean?

In this verse, the opposites of pride must be verbs. To oppose pride is to respect instead of despise, to face the needy instead of turning our backs and closing our eyes, to to act against others' hunger and thirst, to minister to the sick, and have empathy with the afflicted.

Why do I choose to say respect instead of love? Because what passes today for Christian love is too often condescending--love without respect is also prideful.

What does it mean to face the needy? Emmanuel used to say that to relate to another face-to-face is to sense the vulnerability of the Other and that, as Rambam used to say, the loss of any one person is the loss of a whole world.

Why hunger and thirst? Perhaps the hunger is physical and the thirst spiritual, a thirsting for knowledge and peace.

Why sick and afflicted? "Sickness" is for those ailments that can be healed in this life, "affliction" is for those conditions God has given individuals to endure for the entirety of their mortal sojourn.

The Point -- 2 Nephi 2: 25

"Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." (2 Ne 2: 25)

"Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." (Luke 18: 17)

The midrash?




'Nuff said.

Photos courtesy of V. Elisabeth Westwood

Anime Ammon -- D&C 1: 24

"Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding."

What is the manner of our language and how does it change over time? Is there an inherent value to connecting with God, at times, in the manner of our own language, whatever it may be?

I talked to an agent for Deseret Book several months ago about the possibility of publishing an additional illustrated version of the Book of Mormon, in which the characters were anthropomorphized people-animals (a la, for example, Brian Jacques novels) rather than people. I suggested this partly just because my brother used to draw Book of Mormon characters that way, and partly because I thought obviously imaginary renderings like that would free up children to visualize characters on their own and solve the problem of children taking problematic existing depictions literally.

The group I was with was excited about the proposal, but the agent was not. He said that customers are pretty sensitive about what they get in terms of religious depictions and was pessimisstic about the ability of such a work to sell.

If I were to re-pitch a similar concept today, though--and I probably should--I would frame it as a "kids illustrate Book of Mormon stories" project and incorporate a variety of styles coming from actual young artists around the world. D&C 1: 24, I think, provides an appropriate justification: giving children a chance to receive these stories in the manner of their own language might help them come more quickly and organically to meaningful understanding.

To give you a flavor of such a work, I present the following three drawings by Braden and Franklin, two of my own primary students.



Braden loves Ammon, and it shows.



One Sunday the boys had a heated discussion on the topic: "Who would you have joined: Coriantumr or Shiz?" Franklin has been fascinated with that story every since. (Tangential note: Gabe insisted he would've hidden in a rock to avoid the war. The other boys told him that Coriantumr and Shiz were sweeping the land to force everyone to fight, and that Gabe, lacking a prophet's protection, would have been found and forced to fight. Gabe responded that he would have hidden in Ether's rock, taking quite literally the sentiment that we should follow the prophet.)



This last one is Braden's. It's Jesus, I think during his visit to the Nephites (I also think Braden meant to draw feet, but ran out of time). I prefer this Jesus's wrinkled face and intense gaze to the glowing Jesus of of the Simon Dewey and Greg Olson paintings that seem to dominate the LDS market at the moment. The manner of Braden's language has more power for me.

Lehi the Heretic -- 1 Ne 1: 19-20

"And it came to pass that the Jews did mock him because of the things which he testified of them; for he truly testified of their wickedness and their abominations; and he testified that the things which he saw and heard, and also the things which he read in the book, manifested plainly of the coming of a Messiah, and also the redemption of the world.

And when the Jews heard these things they were angry with him; yea, even as with the prophets of old, whom they had cast out, and stoned, and slain; and they also sought his life, that they might take it away." (from 1 Ne 1: 19-20)

When Lehi told the people about their own sins, they "mocked" him. Mocking, to me, suggests they aren't taking it too hard: these are callous and self-assured sinners who don't feel a need to respond directly to charges of misconduct.

Then Lehi tells them about a vision he had and a book he read in that vision which gave him a specific brand of Messianic hope--and that's when they get angry and try to kill him.

So, let me get this straight: a man comes claiming to be a prophet and tells you that you are about to be destroyed in consequence of purported sins, and you think he's deluded but amusing. Then he tells you that a Messiah will come and redeem the world--and you want him dead? How does that make any sense?

I remember an investigator complaining once about the overt anticipation of Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon: Biblical prophecies of Christ's coming, he explained, were invariably verschluesselt (encoded, hidden, locked, in need of a key) whereas the Book of Mormon ones seemed too direct, too overt. My explanations at the time were that the translation process may have removed some of the culture-bound crypticness of Book of Mormon prophecy in favor of overt and accessible modern language, or that the total geographic separation from the land where Christ would be born made God more willing to be overt in his revelations to Nephite prophets.

My more recent theory, though, is that Lehi, and Nephi after him, were simply heretics whose version of Messianic hopes placed them outside the acceptable constraints of mainstram Judaism. They were more overtly Christian in their thinking and "bold" in their preaching, and that's a big part of why they had to leave, lest they suffer the same fate as Zenos (see Hel. 8: 19).

Nephite religion, then, should be viewed less as a direct extension of Judaism than as a breakaway new religious movement differentiated above all by the divergent Messianic teachings of its founders. At approximately the same time that Buddha was departing from classical Hindu thought by his teachings on the nature of spiritual discipline and his divergent doctrine of the soul, Lehi and especially Nephi were stepping out of conventional Judaism with their ideas of how the Messiah should be defined and what redemption would constitute.

The God of Statistics -- Alma 42: 13

"Therefore, according to justice, the plan of redemption could not be brought about, only on conditions of repentance of men in this probationary state, yea, this preparatory state; for except it were for these conditions, mercy could not take effect except it should destroy the work of justice. Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God"

When God created the mortal universe, he wrapped it in a special barrier called statistics to protect it from the full force of divine will. Thus, in heaven, every act is met immediately with the exact and appropriate consequence: goodness returned with goodness, evil turning back on itself with evil. Pure mathematics. And yet to create a space for probation, the law of consequence on earth is diffracted through a prism of probabilities: we sometimes fail to immediately receive the physical blessings of our obedience, thus increasing our opportunity to exercise faith through agency, and we often fail to reap the full consequence of sin at once, giving us windows for repentance. Is there no justice in the world? God forbid. But God has loosened the effects of justice for a season, from certainty to probability, that we might repent before we return to see his face and live in perfect justice again.

A Maxwell Midrash -- 2 Nephi 31:13

"witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism"

Elder Maxwell used to say, "willing to take the name" refers to the covenant of baptism, but "take the name" is in reference to the subsequent covenants of the temple. And in another place it is written "thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." We may show willingness to take the name by baptism even as children of eight, but the Lord will not suffer that we take his name in our youth, lest we lightly take it in vain, casting aside so great a covenant.

Why Did Nephi Love Isaiah? or What's a Nice Boy from Manasseh Doing in a Place Like This?

On my grandparents' living room wall are portraits of three prophets: Thomas S. Monson, Joseph Smith, and David O. McKay. The first two are probably on many Mormon walls all across the world: it makes a certain amount of sense to give special attention to the current prophet and the first prophet of the Restoration. It also makes a certain amount of sense not to include all the latter-day prophets in one's living room--16 portraits might be a bit overwhelming to visitors. Three is a much more reasonable number of prophets to display to guests, but why choose David O. McKay over, say Lorenzo Snow or Spencer W. Kimball?

The answer in our case is very simple: David O. McKay was the prophet when my grandfather immigrated from Punjab to the United States and joined the LDS church. Joseph Smith may have been the church's first prophet, but David O. McKay was my grandfather's first living prophet, and as such will always carry a special place in his heart, and probably in our family's hearts for generations. My family history and spiritual history are intertwined: my sense of what is spiritually significant may always be colored by my grandparents' experience as well as my own.

While we know that Nephi's family history was important to him, it's hard to be specific about the details, since we don't have them written down. In the books of Nephi, we learn about Nephi's parents and religious identity and get scattered references to Joseph as an ancestor, but that's it. Not until Alma 10: 2 do we learn that Lehi was from the tribe of Manasseh. The Book of Mormon gives us no clues as to what a community of Manasseh's descendants, heirs to the northwest, might have been doing in Jerusalem, a city so associated with the tribes of the south.

For that, you'll have to look in the Bible.

Latter-day Saints don't tend to spend a lot of time in the book of 2 Chronicles: two weeks every four years if you're sticking to the gospel doctrine class member guides, which is a lot better than most of us do. Which is why you're probably not casually acquainted with the story of Hezekiah's Passover in 2 Chr. 30. By the time of this story, the northern kingdom of Israel had long since fallen into apostasy and idolatry, and the southern kingdom of Judah had been just as bad more often than not. Hezekiah, though, was righteous, and had even selected a prophet named Isaiah as his most trusted advisor. After cleaning up his own kingdom, Hezekiah sent messengers to the northern tribes inviting them to come and celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem according to the law, joining in the revival. Many "laughed them to scorn" but "divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem."

Could it be that Lehi's own grandfather was among that group? Did Isaiah mean to him and his sons what David O. McKay meant to my grandfather, and through him, to me?