I meet Nephi at a bar in the afterlife. (Jesus drank wine, so yes, the afterlife has alcohol in it.) We’ve been assigned to the same group for processing/healing – people who coped with dysfunctional families by turning into perfectionists. Neither of us knows what the afterlife is going to do to us. Everyone was wrong about what happens after you die, so we’re just waiting around to find out what happens next.
In this story, I’ve never heard of Nephi before. I meet him for the first time at this bar. We’ve been talking for a while.
“I loved my parents; they were good people,” Nephi says. “But my brothers were shite. Laman and Lemuel were evil. Sam was okay sometimes, when L&L were being mean to him too. If they were having one of their less-awful weeks, Sam dumped me for them. I learned not to rely on Sam. My younger two brothers were good guys. It’s like we had two separate families in one. The three older bad guys, and the three younger good guys.”
“My parents were great on the surface,” I reply. “Church every week. Scriptures and prayer at home. My parents were crazy hard workers – like, if something needed to get done, they got it done. They passed that on to all of us. I’m crazy good at getting things done. Crazy. Like, all my self-worth is tied up in getting things done. I’m useful. I’m so bloody useful.”
“I had to make up for everything my brothers did wrong,” Nephi says.
“I had to make up for everything my siblings and mom did wrong,” I say.
“My brothers would tie me up and beat me. Once I was tied up, they would tell me they were going to leave me like that and let wild animals eat me alive.”
“Damn,” I say.
“At first they would apologize. The people we were with would beg L&L to let me go and eventually they would. Then they’d say they were sorry and I would tell them to repent before God.” Nephi takes a sip of his wine and shakes his head. “Every single time, I thought it was the last time.” He takes another sip. “I was so stupid.”
“Hopeful,” I correct him.
“Stupid,” he insists.
“Okay.” It’s not my job to fix everyone’s feelings; I’m getting used to that idea.
“The last time they tied me up, they nearly killed everyone. God sent a storm, and we were on a ship.”
He already told me about building the ship, about how L&L laughed at him when he asked for their help, and then he shocked the crap out of them by the power of God.
“Anyway, my wife and children begged them to let me go. My parents practically died of a broken heart. They untied me, but that time they didn’t apologize. And I finally figured out they were never going to stop.”
“It’s too bad God’s storm couldn’t wash L&L overboard,” I observe.
Nephi snorts and signals the bartender for more wine. I haven’t drunk any of mine. Wine gives me an instant headache. I’m just holding a glass and occasionally raising it to my lips to keep Nephi company. It’s too bad Jesus didn’t drink cocktails, or anything besides wine. It makes for a limited menu at afterlife bars.
“Sometimes I’m as angry at God as I am at my brothers,” he admits softly.
“Same.”
“What was I supposed to learn? Isn’t suffering supposed to have some kind of purpose? What’s the lesson in finding out you were an idiot for letting your brothers get on the ship with you? If I could go back and change one thing, I would leave L&L on the beach. We’d sail away and I’d wave at them and laugh while they yelled death threats at me until I couldn’t hear them anymore. That’s what I would have done.”
“I would have rebelled as a teenager.”
“What does that even mean?” Nephis asks. He’s genuinely confused.
“In my case, not much,” I admit. “I don’t have a rebellious bone in my body. I guess I wish I’d picked a few fights. I never even fought with my parents. There was this one time when I actually had a boyfriend — that was really rare — but there was this one time we’d been out late on a Saturday and I wanted to sleep in and skip Church the next day. My mom told me that if I didn’t get up and go to Church, I was going to lose boyfriend privileges. So I got up and went to Church.”
Nephi is trying to look sympathetic, but my God, it sounds so lame now. It’s one of my core memories (thank you, Inside Out and Pixar for that concept). “I started crying at Church, crying hard, ugly crying, and I took refuge in the bathroom. Mom found me — I guess someone told her I was crying in the bathroom. She hugged me and said that she knew the Spirit would soften my heart once I got to Church. I cried harder because that wasn’t why I was crying. I was so wrung out and tired of doing everything right. All I wanted to do was skip Church for one week, and I couldn’t even do that. And instead of fighting with my mom, I’d convinced her that the Spirit had softened my heart. I was the most misunderstood perfect daughter on the entire planet.”
Nephi doesn’t get it, I can tell. But we’re both in this group because the trauma of trying to be the perfect child shaped our entire lives, so he’s trying to find a connection in the family dynamics, despite how different our actual circumstances were.
“See, the problem was my dad,” I explain. “He had a temper. My mom told me that Dad has high standards, and when we can’t meet them, he gets mad. His temper was actually a positive trait. Or that’s the way she tried to spin it, anyway. He roared and stomped and threatened to beat us to death to, I dunno, make us better people? It made sense when I was a little kid. I thought if I could meet Dad’s high standards, he would stop getting mad at my siblings and mom.”
“Huh. I never thought that about L&L.”
“See? You’re not stupid. I’m not calling myself stupid,” I hasten to add, because I can see he wants to interrupt me. “I was a little kid, and I wanted my dad to stop scaring us and Mom said Dad got mad because he wanted things (us) to be perfect and they weren’t. I internalized that between one breath and the next and concluded that, if I was perfect, I could save my entire family from Dad’s temper.”
Nephi nods. “I understand.”
I nod too. There’s no need to say it didn’t work; it never worked. That part was obvious. My plan to save my family warped me, but it didn’t save any of them.
I take a deep breath, because this next part is something I’ve never talked about before. “It hurt that my family never saw what I was trying to do. They resented me instead. I tried so hard to be perfect in order to help them and all they saw was a goody-two-shoes. I found out later that my parents used my efforts to scold my siblings. I got perfect grades; I never forgot to do chores; I kept all the commandments. Why couldn’t they follow my example? They resented me. I loved them and they resented me and I didn’t even know.” I’m blinking back tears at this point.
Nephi rotates his wine glass in his hand, lost in contemplation. “There was this one time when we were all hungry. We could only eat if we could hunt, and everyone else’s bow was unusable except for mine. And I broke it. I broke my bow and everyone lost it, even my father. I yelled at them. I was so tired of carrying everyone in the family, and now even my father was whining and it was all on me. I made a bow and arrow. You’d think someone else would have done that when their bows lost their spring, but no, they just quit hunting. I got to do it all because I had the only working bow. Anyway.”
Nephi heaves a sigh that came up from his toes and shakes his head. “Once I made a bow and arrow, my father went and prayed and we got back on track. But things were different after that. It wasn’t just my bow that broke. My father’s faith and authority took a beating. A figurative beating, you understand, I got a literal beating because L&L are like that.” Nephi says this last line drily. “After that, it was all on me. I was trying to keep us from dying and L&L wouldn’t shape up. Every time I told them that I’d end up ruling over them if they didn’t … pull their heads out of their asses (pardon my language) … they acted like I was trying to set myself up as a dictator. Like being in charge was a power trip instead of a slog! God knows how much I wanted L&L to man up and be leaders instead of dumping everything on me. And then my father broke too and it was all me. I tried so hard and they only ever hated me.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I hadn’t tried so hard, if my siblings would have loved me, at least,” I say.
“Same.”
We sit in silence for a long time. I think he’s noticed I’m not drinking my wine but he doesn’t say anything. He’s stopped drinking his wine too and I feel a twinge of guilt that he’s denying himself because I can’t drink wine without a headache and so somehow it’s my fault that Nephi can’t enjoy his drink. See how I still have those thought patterns? If I was good enough — and didn’t get a headache at the first sip of wine — Nephi could enjoy his wine. It’s all my fault. Never mind that I didn’t ask him to stop drinking. It’s still my fault.
“Can I tell you the worst thing I ever did?” Nephi asks. He’s almost whispering.
I nod.
“I killed a guy.”
My eyebrows go up. I was not expecting that.
“Remember I told you that our father sent us back to Jerusalem to get the brass plates?”
I nod again. “Some guy chased you off and then your brothers beat you until you saw an angel.”
He gives that scoffing laugh again. “I was so done. They couldn’t do anything right. It burns me up that L&L can’t see that they were utter failures as leaders and that’s why I kept telling them I was going to take over. I may have been stupid, but those guys were next-level incompetent.”
I get it. Nephi thought he was warning his brothers that he would take over if he had to, and his brothers heard it as a power-hungry threat. I don’t think Nephi understands that L&L heard it like that, but it isn’t my job to explain L&L’s idiocy to Nephi so I don’t say anything. Sometimes, people are so dumb that the fact that they misunderstood doesn’t exonerate them; it’s just more evidence that they’re losers.
“I left them outside Jerusalem and went in alone. I was relying totally on the Spirit. I didn’t even know what I was going to do, just that God would have to tell me to do it.”
He told me the first part of this story earlier. Laman actually had made the first effort to get the brass plates — his only effort to act like the eldest brother. It ended in Laman running for his life, so maybe his lack of leadership efforts are understandable. Their second effort was to barter for the brass plates, and that left all four of them running for their lives. Like, literally, the rich guy sent men after them to kill them. They hid in a cave and L&L beat Nephi and Sam with a stick until an angel showed up.
That’s where we got distracted, comparing spiritual experiences and revelations that happened when we were at our lowest points. I was excited to finally be talking to someone whose best and worst moments are sandwiched together too and he didn’t finish the story.
Now he’s finishing the story and throwing red flags with every word. His brothers beat him with a stick (I’m picturing something like a baseball bat), he saw an angel, and now he’s alone except for the Spirit. I think of the things I’ve done when I felt what I thought was spiritual euphoria after a particularly horrible episode of family trauma, and how I didn’t even know the phrase ‘altered consciousness’ until years later. It isn’t the Spirit. Whatever is going on right now, Nephi is deep in a trauma response and it only feels like something holy because he’s recently been through family hell and anything feels like heaven after that.
“I wasn’t wandering aimlessly through Jerusalem; I was being led by the Spirit. There was a drunk guy passed out in an alley and the Spirit guides me to go see who it is and it’s Laban. That’s the rich guy who has the brass plates. It’s Laban, and he’s passed out drunk, and the Spirit tells me to kill him so I do. I take his sword and I cut off his head.”
I keep my expression neutral when Nephi looks at me to see my response.
“I put on his clothes, go to where he keeps the brass plates, lie to a servant, and take the brass plates.” He takes a swig of wine, a deep draught that nearly drains the cup. Then he sets it down, steels himself, and turns to me. “I killed a guy.”
“What about the blood?” I ask.
“What?”
“You cut off his head and then got dressed in his clothes. You must have been blood-soaked.”
“There wasn’t any blood.”
“You cut off his head,” I repeat.
“He didn’t bleed. I remember thinking that was odd.”
“Nephi, you decapitated a corpse. Blood stops flowing after someone dies because their heart stops. Rigor mortis sets in. Corpses don’t bleed. You didn’t kill anyone; he was already dead.”
Nephi’s face goes white.
I let him sit with that in silence.
When he starts crying, I pat his shoulder.
You know, maybe this is the afterlife’s plan for us. We think we’re waiting around, waiting for someone else to start healing us or forgiving us, or whatever it is we need. But perhaps there isn’t going to be anyone else. Perhaps it’s just us.
THE END
Amongst those of us who have nuanced opinions of the Book of Mormon, I occasionally hear people say that they despise Nephi for being so faithful and obedient. Can’t they see it’s a trauma response? If you’ve got a perfect child in a dysfunctional family, the perfectionism is a coping mechanism, not obedience motivated by the love of Christ.
Nephi’s brothers abused him – physically, verbally, and emotionally. Is it annoying to have a perfect brother when you’re a whiny sinner like Laman & Lemuel? Sure it is. A proportional response to an annoying righteous brother is some teasing, telling him to chill out, maybe break a rule in front of him just to see his reaction. But tying up a guy and telling him you’re going to leave him to be eaten alive by wild animals? Beating your brother with a stick? Tying him up in front of his wife and kids while they beg for mercy? Treating him so badly that your parents collapse in heartbreak and fear? That’s not sibling rivalry. That’s abuse.
One of the criticisms I hear leveled at the Book of Mormon is that the characters are flat, one-dimensional, either all-good or all-bad. I don’t see Nephi as “all good” any more than I look back on my efforts to fix my family by being perfect and see myself as “all good.” I see desperation, loneliness, failure, and so much fear that I can’t stand it.
Nephi did as well as anyone could, and the instant his father died, he picked up and left Laman and Lemuel and never spoke to them again. The Psalm of Nephi in 2 Nephi 4 contains so much anguish. He. Tried. So. Hard. And he failed. That isn’t a one-dimensional good guy.
I get him. I understand. Sure, I don’t condone his racist remarks (obligatory disclaimer and etc), but I know why he tried so hard to do everything right in order to save his family and I know how much it broke him when he failed.
Questions:
- Have you ever experienced a spiritual experience (euphoria) right after a truly traumatic event?
- While recovering from perfectionism, I had to acknowledge that perfectionism is a shaky bridge over a chasm of insecurity. Perfectionists are trying to earn the right to exist. Do you think Nephi was a perfectionist with a lot of insecurities?
- Are people who are joyfully and willingly righteous also obnoxious and self-righteous like Nephi was? I know Nephi annoyed his brothers, but I don’t believe Nephi had the self-confidence and self-acceptance that would have helped him be pleasant company.
- If Laban didn’t bleed when Nephi cut off his head … did Nephi really kill him? How would it change the stories that the Church tells about Nephi’s faith if Laban was already dead? Wouldn’t it be great if the Church leaders stopped teaching that God can command someone to kill an unconscious person?
- If you’re familiar with the literary technique of an unreliable narrator, what do you think of Nephi as an unreliable narrator? What’s the difference between writing a memoir and writing a history?
- I wrote a longer and more detailed post about Nephi’s dysfunctional family a couple years ago. Laman and Lemuel: Patterns of Abuse.
Wheat & Tares 
Amazing writing!
For a good decade or so once I hit mid-teenager, my father and bonded over being able to relate to Nephi’s story. This post provides framework/language that points out the “why” we did so.
I start with the parents in any dysfunctional family. Lehi constantly shamed his family. Instead of loving his kids, he shamed them, all of them even Nephi who was trying to be perfect. He did even worse by comparing them, probably when Nephi was too young to even be anything but a toddler, Lehi was telling the older boys, “why can’t you be like Nephi.” The older boys could see that Nephi wasn’t that great, so all they got out of it was how they weren’t good enough. And when there was hard work, like going back to get some supper expensive gold treasure, he sends some inexperienced nobody kids, rather than realizing he is the respected member of Jerusalem society and his position has more clout, and he is the best one to bargain for all that golden treasure. Lehi acts like an invalid, yet he is vigorous enough to father a few more children, so he was not in fact too old to be helping with the hunting or going back to Jerusalem himself. He doesn’t contribute to the group in anyway, just bosses people around. He doesn’t help hunt, or even do the work back in camp of fixing the damaged equipment. He’s too good to even get his hands dirty. And constantly shames others for not doing a good enough job at the tasks he can’t be bothered with.
Children don’t take well to other children constantly being bragged up. They see it as a sign that they are not good enough. My mother in law was constantly bragging up her grandkids…to the *other* grandkids. So, Dick heard stories about how great cousin Jane was. Dick would attempt to tell granny about his great win at football, only to be ignored and told how great Jane’s piano recital was. Dick ended up hating Jane. MEANWHILE, when Jane vistited granny, all she heard was how wonderful Dick was and such a great football star. She would try to get granny to listen to how scared she was about the recital and get brushed off with more bragging about Dick. Jane ended up hating Dick. But Granny thought she loved all her grandchildren and was only trying to get them to appreciate each other. She ended up treating all of them as if they had no importance to her and that the other grandchildren were so much better, because she didn’t talk to them. She talked about their cousins to them. I even heard her and assumed she just didn’t like my kids, but then I didn’t think she liked me either, so no surprise there.
So, it was Laman and Lemuel who were originally at fault for the family disfunction but Lehi. And who never stood up for Nephi. It was Lehi who should have sent them back to Jerusalem to live because he knew they were beating up on younger siblings and Lehi never did a single thing to stop them.
Like the girls I used to have as sexual abuse clients who were sexually abused by a big brother. The biggest damage wasn’t from the abuse. It was from parents knowing and not stopping it by sending big brother to reform school. They were more concerned with “ruining” his life that they just let the abuse keep happening. That’s dysfunctional parents. And when you hear the older brother’s story, you find out they are acting out their own hurt that the parents caused. Sure, they are taking it out on little sister, because they don’t have the power to beat up mom & dad.
And it makes good sense that Laban was already dead.
Wow, Janey. Wow. I love this post! Thanks for giving me a whole new framing to Nephi’s experience. And also, I’m sorry that you had such a difficult experience growing up with your parents and perfectionism and trying to solve what couldn’t be solved.
This is the best post I have read on the bloggernacle in years.
Amazing! Thank you
This is an excellent post. I’m not sure yet exactly which ideas I agree with and disagree with, but it’s a great post because it has given me things to think about. I think this is the first time I’ve seen it suggested that Laban was already dead.
All real people (and we’re assuming Nephi is a real person in this whole discussion) are inherently unreliable narrators, and even more so when they’re writing about their own experiences. Most of us are interested in writing ourselves as the heroes in our own stories, except for a smaller segment of people who insist on making themselves look worse in their own recounting. People largely suck at writing histories; we tend to tell stories, based on our own memories and feelings, rather than histories. (This is why it takes skill and practice to be a good historian.) I’ve long considered Nephi as one of the least reliable narrators in all of scripture. That doesn’t make him a bad person, it just means that I think about his writing differently.
I’m not sure the writings of Nephi support Anna’s ideas of Lehi very well. Firstly, we’re only getting Nephi’s opinion of Lehi. Lehi is hardly a “respected member of Jerusalem society” if the people were angry enough with him that they sought to kill him. And fathering children isn’t exactly proof of hunting ability; for all we know he had crippling arthritis.
I was today years old when I considered for the very first time that Laban mighta been dead already, and not simply passed out. thanks for that!
Through five years of early morning seminary teaching, I endeavored to get the students to consider things like “unreliable narrator” and “what’s not being said” etc. It definitely changed my view of Nephi, which had predictably evolved (in my own life) from admiration (as a young/simple person) toward skepticism (thinking: what’s he not telling us about L&L? Did they really do that? Etc.). But this is about the best example i’ve ever encountered of deep-down humanizing Nephi in a more complete way. It’s kinda jaw dropping. Slow clap, Janey.
I think that perspectives like this are so valuable, and excellent reminders of the “whole people” that make up the scriptural narrators. And if we can even catch brief glimpses of that, it helps us reserve a bit of judgment. It was eye-opening for some of my seminary students, for instance, to be asked to consider why Nephi never talks about his sisters. Why are they invisible? My YW students smelled blood in the water and ran with it for a minute, describing Nephi as misogynist etc, and I was careful not to shut that down, and would just let it run for a little bit. But then I’d enter back in and say: ok sure. Maybe Nephi was a misogynist or a creep or toxic in his masculinity. It’s possible. But isn’t it also possible that it was just a blind spot for him? That he was mistaken? [brief tangent on how women were “property” in OT times, etc] Or, put another way: have you ever thought you had something figured out, or believed you were doing something the right way, but then encountered someone saying: hey, I don’t know if you realize you’re doing this, but…. And that interaction was an epiphany for you? Have you ever evolved in your understanding of something, or realized you were wrong or had a blind spot? Maybe Nephi never really had that. Maybe he was doing the best he was able, and was (indeed) wrong about some things, but it was less out of malice than out of ignorance.
Just getting them to consider a variety of views like that accomplishes so much, I believe, in deepening one’s engagement with the scriptures.
Ditto this. Well done.
I really appreciate the story. there is alot to think about. I reading this story I began to see paralells in The Jacob story in Genesis in how Jacob dealt with his sons and the relationship between them was in this case based on who’s yo mama. But in the end it seems that the family managed to come together to a degree in the end. From my perspective all families can be called dysfunctional to one degree or another. Yet most of us seem to come through it alright. so I am not trying to be too judgemental heven knows I am far from perfect. If I were in Lehi’s place would I have acted differently? I don’t know. I know there were things that I did as a parent, looking back that I would done differently if I could get a do over.
A really interesting reading. Fantastic Janey.
Last years Sunday school lesson on Lehi’s dream, and the discussion of Laman and Lemuel not going to the tree in spite of Lehi’s beckoning to them, I commented that it looked to me that they didn’t trust him. If they did trust him, they would have gone. It could well be a lesson Lehi was supposed to learn about his relationship with his sons.
I was always on Nephi’s side until a few years ago. I found him an unreliable narrator and he seemed too perfect. And then when I started my faith crisis/transition, I found myself curious about Laman and Lemuel. All they did was question why their dad wanted to go live in the wilderness and suddenly they were unbelievers. I still remember reading how Lehi wakes up, says he had a dream and condemns his two oldest sons for a DREAM! I felt very similar to them for how my own family reacted to my faith crisis. So I have a lot more sympathy for them. I’m also the oldest in a family where it’s obvious my mom adores my younger brothers. I wish I could hear their side of the story.
Thanks for all the kind words! I was a little nervous about publishing fiction, since I know people don’t come here to read fiction. I’m glad it resonated and provided some insight.
I’ve quit Church, and I don’t consider the Book of Mormon to be a literal history or even scripture. I don’t think the Bible is very helpful as scripture either. They’re all just stories. Like BlueRidgeMormon and DaveW pointed out, you’ve got to look in the gaps, and accept the storyteller as a whole person who is (as we all do) writing with limited knowledge and with some misunderstandings.
Despite my loss of faith, I still find a lot of value in the Book of Mormon. I think the way the Church leaders try to teach the BoM is the worst possible way to teach it. But stories about how people are trying to interact with God and live their (difficult) lives are going to have value the same way most stories have value. I mean, I’ve read, “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” more than 20 times because I found so much meaning in it and that book is entirely secular. Stories have value.
I was 1500 words into this story when Nephi asked if he could tell me about killing a guy. While I was writing it, I had the idea that Laban was already dead drop into my mind. So I considered that idea for the first time two days ago, when I wrote this. How’s that for inspired fiction? And I mean “inspired” as in “brings up a new idea that I didn’t think of before I was two-thirds of the way through writing this and that is apparently new to you all too” and not “God gave me a revelation and you all have to believe it.”
Raymond Dunn – Years ago, I wrote a long essay about Joseph in the Bible and his family reconciliation, with a compare and contrast to Nephi’s family. Maybe I’ll dig it up and dust it off and post it.
Stacey – About L&L’s story, I remember a humorous version circulating in the days before the Internet. It was called the Plates of Laman and they were found with a pair of fuzzy dice and it mostly complained about Nephi. lol. It would be interesting to see a serious treatment of L&L’s point of view.
Again, thanks for all the kind words about this post! You all are the best!
It’s interesting to think about family dynamics. My dad died last year and so my family has had to get together to help take care of my mom and the family dynamics are wild. It’s weird how even though you are grown and gone, when you get together again you are all just like you were when you lived together.
Like Lehi and Sarah, my mom and dad had two families. I am the oldest, with one younger sister about 2 years after me, and then they had another two daughters ten years later.
My mother and I have been close our entire lives. I am a strong personality and I hadn’t learned much emotional modulation yet as a teenager. Apparently the two youngest sisters still resent that and they have strange ideas about my relationship with my mother, imagining that I bully her in some way.
We got together recently and they brought this up claiming I had bullied her into being in charge of a family meeting the previous night. Their evidence was that I had encouraged her that she was doing fine when she offered to hand it off. My mom and I were both so offended by their assumptions. Their mistaken assumptions were mind blowing! My mother wanted to have the meeting and was happy with how it turned out!
My mother did set them all straight. But their attitudes have deeply hurt us both. My mother resents being seen as a weak passive person who doesn’t have strength or ideas of her own. I resent being seen an abusive perpetrator. The truth is, we are close friends that tell each other everything that matters. My mother decided she won’t consent to all of us visiting at the same time in the future. Things don’t get so confused when we are one on one on the phone 🤷
I imagine Lehi and Sarah’s family was like that. The story would have been entirely different if one of the other brothers (or sisters) had told the story. Everything looks different from another perspective. For that matter, if any of Joseph Smith’s brothers had written the Book of Mormon, it would have been different.
Thanks Janey
This is one of the best things I’ve read in a very long time. I wish I could add something insightful, but alas I cannot. I just really appreciate the thought and creativity that went into this. I guess I pretty much just agree with you Janey that scriptures are basically stories and we are the ones who get to make meaning out of them. I suppose there is one thing I can add. I remember a basic wellness course I took at BYU. The professor quoted in the course textbook Luke 21:2: “It shall come to pass in the last days that men’s hearts will fail.” He went on to suggest that this scripture was literal and was fulfilled in the sobering statistics about heart disease being the leading cause of death for Americans or the developed world. For him, adopting healthy behaviors to avoid “heart failure” was a spiritual imperative. I found this a novel way to “liken the scriptures unto ourselves.”
Wonderful post Janey, I love it. I have a pretty broad definition of what I consider scripture, and I would say that this post is scripture to me. Thank you for writing it an sharing it!
This was actually a great post. Thanks for sharing. Very thought provoking for me.
Book of Mormon problems can get solved and insight get revealed by admitting its narrators can be unreliable. Some of the narrators even try to help out by saying so.
Will the church ever help readers do this? So far looks like a no. Farthest it goes is recent talks like Renlund’s with lots of “we may never knows” but in the end still holds up Nephi’s story. Guess it’s better that one man perish or any number of people because someone had a feeling and was told the story their whole lives about how feelings could be the voice of God telling you to kill someone, and nobody in church leadership could ever care about walking that back because it might undermine their authority. Maybe the authority of the church is really what’s worshipped.
Thank God for women who can reveal something that priesthood authority can’t be bothered with for a few centuries.
Why would God tell Nephi to cut off Laban’s head if he was already dead?
Dead or not, the point is that a God who tells someone to kill someone else is not a God I’m interested in. If God was really involved, I’m sure he could have figured out a different way for Nephi to get the plates.
More likely – Nephi, like Joseph Smith, thought he heard a voice in his head and believed God was talking to him.