Val's Email Sunday School: We Need Honorable Men

 

I had a hard time figuring out what to discuss in Email Sunday School this week. I just wasn’t sure which direction to go, which is unusual for me. There are so many stories, concepts, or people that you could talk about. Usually there’s a part of the reading that really jumps out, and I start making connections to other scriptures and concepts, but this week it was harder. The stories are about wars and politics and faith. Although we are told that The Book of Mormon was written for our day, I think we have to be very careful not to try to make direct parallels and superimpose stories in scripture directly over our society as though they follow a direct template. I believe the lessons we learn from the scriptures are probably more generalized, and more about themes and patterns of human societies and individual human behavior rather than a roadmap of what’s happening today (even though sometimes it does seem like there are direct parallels).

With that said, I have chosen to talk about Captain Moroni and a bit about Helaman’s 2,000 warriors. I like these stories and encourage everyone to read them. We’re told in Alma 48:17 that “. . . if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men.” We’re given a few other examples of men like this in the next verse who are also admirable and good, but for our purposes now we’ll focus on Moroni.

What are some things we can learn about Captain Moroni in the recent reading and the reading this week to help us understand what he was like and why if more people were like him, the devil couldn’t have power over the people’s hearts anymore? It’s interesting to consider things in this light, throughout the reading we saw Moroni angry repeatedly. We saw him using strategies and battling against enemies and killing people. We even saw him send a really strongly worded letter to the government, demanding the support and provisions his men needed, threatening to go and take out the government if they were no longer supporting freedom. He threatened to come down there and take care of things by force. This is just such an interesting perspective. Turns out that they hadn’t sent the support that Moroni and all of his men needed because they were dealing with their own insurrection, so Moroni had actually been wrong in his assumptions of what was probably going on. What can this teach us?

If we assume that Moroni really is an example to which we aspire, these qualities are actually good and admirable. It teaches us that anger isn’t a “bad” emotion, like we sometimes think, but that it is useful and powerful and can compel us to action in the right circumstances. Righteous indignation and anger are tools, like so many things that can be used to productive or destructive ends. It reminds me of the scriptures admonishing us to bridle our passions. We aren’t taught that passions are bad, but that we need to be the masters of them, directing them and maintaining control, utilizing them instead of them ruling us. 

There’s no question that in these battles the righteous and the wicked were engaged in violence. Is violence bad? The short answer is yes, but the truer answer is probably that it depends. When your enemies are intent on using violence to subjugate you to their will, to hurt or kill you or your family, these scriptures are teaching us that violence is an acceptable response to protect and preserve your rights, privileges, family, property, possessions, and religion. This part is really interesting to me, because in the United States right now we have people burning and looting and insisting that damaging property, stealing possessions, etc, isn’t violence because people have insurance and these things can be replaced. These scriptures appear to be teaching that those who seek to take away freedoms, property, possessions, or rights are perpetrating violence, and violence can be justified against them. 

We see Captain Moroni and other armies in these chapters using strategy to regain cities over and over. They tricked people repeatedly in various ways and did what they had to do to take back ground. This is interesting because they’re tricking people to try to avoid having to kill others to get what they want, instead they’re using strategy to achieve their goals. I like this because they aren’t crippled by their righteousness, having to be honorable to a fault while the evil people who play dirty are allowed to walk all over them. They did what they had to do to protect and preserve their people and their freedoms, but they did it honorably, which in many of these cases was avoiding killing those who wanted to kill them, if possible. 

These stories give me a better idea of what it means to be an honorable man. These men are not pacifists. They are not weak. They are strong and masculine. They are powerful. They have all the ability in the world to be dangerous, and they choose not to battle for power or dominance, but for the right to live in peace. It reminds me of Superman, a hero that our society doesn’t seem to understand anymore. His appeal is not in his utter strength. He could take anything in the world by force if he wanted to. Superman’s, and men’s, true appeal and superpower is that despite their physical prowess and strength, despite the fact that they can take what they want by force (possessions, virtue, whatever), when they are good they choose to be moral, gentle, humble, and compassionate. To be a man is to use your power for the good of others, not to enrich yourself. As much as society seems to hate it, women and children still need good men who will protect them. As controversial as it may sound, it appears to also show us that there is an appropriate place for anger, ferocity, and even violence. Our scriptures actually teach us that it is appropriate to shed blood of someone who is attacking your family and you’re defending them.

Another theme throughout the reading was that Moroni trusted the Lord in matters of life and death. Trusting in the Lord is a theme that is throughout the reading, and one that the stories of Moroni shares with Helaman and his Warriors. Of the young men warriors Helaman said “Never have I seen so great courage, nay, not amongst all the nephites.” These young men “had not fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them.” Three times throughout the reading, they mentioned the faith of their mothers and how the power that these young men had stemmed from what their mothers had taught them. “And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it.”

I love the stories about the battles that the 2,000 warriors were in. They were inexperienced, yet they were made equal to the task. They were strong and powerful. The scriptures attribute their power to their faith in God. They were so powerful that when they attacked the flank of the opposing army, they were so ferocious “that the whole army of the Lamanites halted and turned upon Helaman.” There are miracles throughout these chapters as the young men are strengthened and protected and none of them are killed. We appear to be taught that it was their willingness to obey with exactness that demonstrated their faith, and “according to their faith it was done unto them.” Again, faith is the power that manifests the miracles. In a different battle, none of the young men in Helaman’s army died, but “neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds.” It was astonishing and miraculous that they were spared. They “put their trust in God continually” and they were delivered (the theme rearing its head once more).

These stories teach us that it is honorable and right to defend our lands, possessions, families, children, rights, privileges, and liberty. They teach us that it was honorable for the people to “take up swords in defence of their freedom, that they might not come into bondage.” They teach us to trust in God and he will deliver us out of the hands of our enemies. 

All of this brought to mind a quote from Margret D. Nadauld, that D. Todd Christofferson quoted in Conference in 2013. It says, “The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity.” This may seem like an odd way to end, when I’ve just praised physical strength, power, and masculinity a lot in this lesson, but I don’t think that it is. I think that men and women both need to strive for these same character traits of kindness, refinement, faith, goodness, virtue and purity. I think striving for and acquiring them are what allow us to have the trust and faith necessary to believe that God will deliver us from our enemies and allow us to trust him continually, regardless of what those “enemies” look like. Whether they’re physical, spiritual, political, or societal threats, the solutions appear to be the same.