latter day satyagraha

And why should I yield to sin, because of my flesh? Yea, why should I give way to temptations, that the evil one have place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul? Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul. Do not anger again because of mine enemies.

The verb droop comes from the Old Norse “drúpa”, which means to ‘hang the head’ in sorrow: “No longer sorrow in sin”. What causes sorrow, if not anger and violence? The picture below is titled: Nephi’s sorrow. It explains well the sorrow that Nephi expresses in the above scripture.

.

NEPHI’S SORROW

.

In the upper-left corner of the picture, you can read the following verses of scripture:

And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him. And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property. And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands; Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. (1 Nephi 4: 10-13)

I think it is interesting that the artist felt compelled among all the Book of Mormon heroes depicted in this “who is your hero” series to draw a representation of Nephi’s sorrow – or inner turmoil – with ‘having to” kill Laban. Although we covered this issue in our first study chapter, where we discussed the ambivalence of religion in general and of mormonism in particular to the use of violence, we see here in 2 Nephi 4 a Nephi who is tired of having to fight his enemies. It is Nephi’s prayer for peace: “why should I give way to temptations, that the evil one have place in my heart to destroy my peace and afflict my soul?” Mahatma Gandhi explained that: “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

The new Institute Student Manual suggests that: “Perhaps Nephi felt burdened by what we might consider trivial weaknesses to the point where they caused him sorrow, and he sought to be free from any vestige of sin”. Shall we think of anger as a trivial weakness?

In a recent conference address (October 2009), President Thomas S. Monson admonishes men in the church to “school thy feelings, o my brother”: “My brethren, we are all susceptible to those feelings which, if left unchecked, can lead to anger. We experience displeasure or irritation or antagonism, and if we so choose, we lose our temper and become angry with others. Ironically, those others are often members of our own families—the people we really love the most. Many years ago I read the following Associated Press dispatch which appeared in the newspaper: An elderly man disclosed at the funeral of his brother, with whom he had shared, from early manhood, a small, one-room cabin near Canisteo, New York, that following a quarrel, they had divided the room in half with a chalk line, and neither had crossed the line or spoken a word to the other since that day—62 years before. Just think of the consequence of that anger. What a tragedy! May we make a conscious decision, each time such a decision must be made, to refrain from anger and to leave unsaid the harsh and hurtful things we may be tempted to say”.

Mahatma Gandhi said that: “Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding”, and that “Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.” Jesus said so eloquently in his Sermon to the Nephites something along the same lines:

“Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, and it is also written before you, that thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment of God; But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore, if ye shall come unto me, or shall desire to come unto me, and rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee — Go thy way unto thy brother, and first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I will receive you”. (3 Nephi 12: 21-24)

During the first years of the civil rights movement, an angry crowd milled around a bombed-out house. Some people yelled threats at city officials checking on the damage. The house belonged to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. On January 30, 1956, the Montgomery bus boycott was still underway. King had gone to a boycott meeting. While he was away someone had planted a bomb on his porch. King’s wife, Coretta, and daughter, Yolanda, who had been in the house, were unharmed. But the crowd of angry blacks was in no mood to listen to pleas for calm.

Martin Luther King, Jr. came out on the porch. He looked at the angry people on his front lawn. He knew some were ready to tear the city apart. But his face showed sadness, not anger or fear. ”We are not advocating violence,” he said. “We want to love our enemies…If I am stopped, our work will not stop, for what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just and God is with us.”The crowd grew silent. King’s house had been damaged. His family could have been killed. Yet he stood there talking of love and forgiveness. A man’s voice broke the silence: “God bless you,” he cried. “Amen!” said the others. Buddha taught us that: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned”.

.

.

Malcolm X had the following things to say about Dr. Martin Luther King: “I’ll say nothing against him. At one time the whites in the United States called him a racialist, and extremist, and a Communist. Then the Black Muslims came along and the whites thanked the Lord for Martin Luther King.” Malcolm X’s ideas were in a sense more antagonistic and more prone to violence, but he believed violence in self-defense was no violence at all: “I don’t mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I’m nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane, and I’m not responsible for what I do.”

Jesus taught us that we are responsible for what we do, and Nephi knew this all too well: “Go thy way unto thy brother, and first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I will receive you”. The Book of Mormon teaches us perhaps more than any other book why peace must start with me and with you and of the importance of seeking peace within our families.

peaceable followers forum