Ether 14: Countdown to Extinction

We're witnessing the death throes of the Jaredite civilization, folks.  

Ain't Happy Without a Good Curse

The chapter begins with a description of a curse that befalls the people.  This is one of the more peculiar ones I've heard of (verse 1):

And now there began to be a great curse upon all the land because of the iniquity of the people, in which, if a man should lay his tool or his sword upon his shelf, or upon the place whither he would keep it, behold, upon the morrow, he could not find it, so great was the curse upon the land.

The people were so wicked that they kept losing things?  It makes more sense to me that they'd become so wicked and so violent that they slept with their hands on their weapons out of a necessary paranoia.  And maybe people would steal the good weapons and tools from their sleeping neighbors.  Or maybe it was a mystical curse.  I guess that works too.

 

Not As Good As Vantage Point

Here's a verse, that, quite honestly, requires no context (verse 9):

And it came to pass that his high priest murdered him as he sat upon his throne.

Again!?  I'm starting to think that if the FBI developed a time machine and used it to track American crime statistics back a few thousand years, they'd discover that about 80% of all homicides in this country prior to European invasion took place on either a throne or a judgment seat.  It's literally the most dangerous place for any character of the Book of Mormon to be at any given time.

Or maybe Joseph Smith just wasn't that creative when it came to dreaming up scenarios for the assassination of government officials (luckily for Lilburn Boggs).

The Great Schism

After a whole lot of fighting and killing, apparently every single person in Jaredite society chooses a side—either Coriantumr or Shiz.  Nobody strikes out on his own.  Every single Jaredite is now a member of an army.  This makes perfect sense to me.  The phenomenon likely shares a sociological explanation with why it's common to see elections in which only two candidates receive votes and no eligible voter abstains from the process.

Blood for the Blood God

In verse 25, we get a nice, straightforward, told-you-so just to make sure we understand that these people got what was coming to them:

And thus we see that the Lord did visit them in the fulness of his wrath, and their wickedness and abominations had prepared a way for their everlasting destruction.

Okay, so the moral of the story is pretty roughly shoved down the reader's throat.  But there's a serious lack of self-awareness in this chapter.  Because just three verses earlier, we were taught this:

And so swift and speedy was the war that there was none left to bury the dead, but they did march forth from the shedding of blood to the shedding of blood, leaving the bodies of both men, women, and children strewed upon the face of the land, to become a prey to the worms of the flesh.

Being punished with destruction for wickedness is something that I don't necessarily agree with, but I can understand the cold logic behind it—at least when it applies to able-minded adults.  But what exactly did those children do to deserve this brutal vengeance from God?  This chapter goes from gruesome depictions of child corpses to gloating about God's execution of justice with frightening speed.  Why did God deem it necessary to punish children for crimes they should not have been accountable for?  Why is it so important to God to use senseless violence as a teaching tool?

And thus we see that God is a bloodthirsty asshole.

Ether 13: Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble

There's some nice little mumbo-jumbo in this chapter about the New Jerusalem being established on the American continent, but I think the most interesting and most central verses here revolve around a meeting between Ether and Coriantumr.

Ether is essentially the only righteous person remaining in the Jaredite society, so he's apparently God's only option when it comes to selecting a prophet.  Ether is staggeringly unpopular because of his preaching, so he's been living in a cave somewhere to avoid being beaten to death.  But then God tells him to go and speak with the wicked king Coriantumr, so Ether dutifully relays the following prophecy:  if Coriantumr repents, his life and his people's lives will be spared—but if he does not repent, Coriantumr will live to see his family and his entire society die, and he will be the last Jaredite left.  Is it just me, or does this feel like the premise of a classical tragedy more than the premise of a book of scripture?  I mean, if it had been three witches talking instead of just gloomy old Ether, it could have been Shakespeare.

But if we're following the pattern of a theatrical tragedy, it should come as no surprise that Coriantumr refuses to repent, tries to kill Ether, and then gets embroiled in an absurd, over-the-top war that fulfills the horrific prophecy.  The next two chapters will go into painstaking detail about how all that comes to pass.

Ether 12: Faith-uh Faith-uh Faith-ahhh

Finally we're nearing the exciting conclusion of the Book of Ether.  You can tell because the prophet who gave the book his name is now in the mix—as well as a badass figure named Coriantumr.

A Treatise on Faith
For you former seminary kids, we have our first of two scripture masteries in this chapter (verse 6):

And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.

Oh, shut up, Moroni, just let Ether tell his little stories.  But let's look at some individual pieces of Moroni's unwelcome interjection.  First, faith is things which are hoped for and not seen.

I don't like this definition.  Because "hope" doesn't really connote belief, it connotes desire.  Many people hope they'll win the lottery, but an extremely small percentage of those people would say they have faith they'll win the lottery.  By Moroni's definition, I have faith in God, because I kind of hope that there is one and that there's a method to the madness...but I don't see much in the way of evidence that any such entity exists.  By a normal person's definition, this attitude does not constitute faith.  Also, I think an important aspect of faith should be a basis in something.  You could have faith that your mother loves you because she's told you so many times, even though love is intangible and not "seen."  You could have faith that your country will recover from political upheaval or economic distress because you've seen it do so in the past, even though you can't "see" the future.  But believing that a meteor will land on the house of your least favorite coworker isn't actually faith because you have nothing to form a realistic basis for that belief.  So not only does Moroni's definition include what it shouldn't, but it's also incomplete.  So what good is that kind of definition?

Next, dispute not because ye see not. I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that Moroni is using the broader, metaphorical sense of the word "see" because even Joseph Smith realized that "dispute not because ye see, hear, smell, touch, and taste not" is a terrible turn of phrase.  So really, what it seems to me that Moroni is saying is "dispute not merely because you have no direct evidence."  But then where do we draw the line at things that we believe and things that we dispute?  Because I have no direct evidence that the government is covering up a crashed flying saucer from Roswell.  I haven't had the chance to examine any wreckage or palpate any alien corpses.  So does that mean that I should not dispute when someone asserts that there are spaceships in hangars and aliens suspended in liquid-filled tubes somewhere in Area 51?  Surely Moroni isn't suggesting that we believe everything we're told even if we're told things that have no supporting evidence.  But if you live by a credo of dispute not because ye see not, you'll be sucked in by every scam and cult you come in contact with.

Third, ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.  I think the Book of Mormon has pretty well demonstrated that this is not the case.  Remember Alma the Younger?  Laman and Lemuel?  Korihor?  Or the gang who tried to murder Lehi and Nephi in their prison cell?  There are plenty of scriptural examples of people who had zero faith who were still provided with a powerful witness of the things they did not believe in (and many of these instances are mentioned later on in this same chapter to demonstrate that miracles cannot be performed without faith, completely disregarding the fact that these miracles were witnessed by those who had no faith or whose faith had not yet been tried).  If this much of the verse is obviously false, why should we place any value on the rest of it?


Faith in Christ
Moroni continues (verse 7):

For it was by faith that Christ showed himself unto our fathers, after he had risen from the dead; and he showed not himself unto them until after they had faith in him; wherefore, it must needs be that some had faith in him, for he showed himself not unto the world.

How, exactly, was it by faith that Christ appeared in the Americas?  I think it would be more accurate to say it was by virtue of a religious purge that Christ appeared in the Americas.  He only descended from Heaven after God had brutally murdered the masses of unbelievers with a series of floods and fires and storms and earthquakes and other assorted calamities.

It's also a little weird that, with such a high premium placed on faith, God would even allow the resurrected Jesus to appear to anyone.  By Moroni's definition, faith is things which are hoped for and not seen.  So when thousands of people touch the wound's in Jesus's hands and side after watching him float down from the sky while a booming voice announced him as the Son of God...none of those people have faith anymore.  They've seen it.  They have knowledge.

Apologists' Adage
Verse 26 contains the phrase "fools mock , but they shall mourn."  My mom brought this up one day after church because she'd heard from someone that one claim against the Book of Mormon's legitimacy is that it lacks the pithy truisms found in other scripture.  My mom pointed to this verse as a wise, memorable quote that could contradict that claim.  In retrospect, this is a pretty weird argument against the Book of Mormon because it's so weak and there's such a surfeit of more powerful approaches.

But it's also such a non-specific adage that, taken out of context, it can be used by anyone.  A Mormon can say it to an ex-Mormon, a Democrat can say it to a Republican, North Korea can say it to South Korea, a Yankee can say it to a Met, and a DC fan can say it to a Marvel fan.  And vice verse, in every single case.  It's meaningless.  And if this is the best example of a profound proverb that my mom could come up with...then maybe the Book of Mormon doesn't have very many.

Weak Sauce
Our second scripture mastery today, verse 27, is an old favorite of mine:

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

I loved this concept because I felt weak.  But this verse made me feel better by explicitly stating that God gave me weaknesses, so it wasn't my fault that I was such an awful, spineless wimp.

More importantly, this verse also taught me that if I remained humble and had faith in God, I could stop being weak.  But looking back, it seems that I was happy to shift responsibility for overcoming my shortcomings away from myself.  I liked this verse because I didn't just feel weak—I felt powerless to change.  Trying was too hard.  This verse made me feel justified because it indicated that I didn't need to summon the power to change from within—it could be provided to me from a benevolent, external source.  It was a vindication of my complacent, hopeless self-image.

I'm still weak in a lot of ways, of course, but I think I've made much greater strides in self-improvement as an ex-Mormon than I ever did as a faithful follower of the Brighamite sect.  Holding the opinion that I'm the one that has to make changes if I expect any changes to happen is daunting, but it's also empowering and motivating. 

Change is more meaningful when it's earned rather than bestowed.  And I never really experienced any strong evidence that the promise in verse 27 worked for me anyway.


Deleted Scenes
Something extraordinary is casually dropped in during this chapter's continued musings on faith (verse 30):

For the brother of Jared said unto the mountain Zerin, Remove—and it was removed. And if he had not had faith it would not have moved; wherefore thou workest after men have faith.

When did this happen??  This is a big deal!  Literally moving a mountain?  If this is such a momentous testament to the power of faith, why is it mentioned so briefly?  Why didn't we go into detail about that event instead of providing a punishingly repetitive and numbingly generic history of kings, lineages, reigns, schisms, and usurpations?  If the whole purpose of this book is to provide another testament of Jesus Christ, why did we spend pages and pages learning names of monarchs we wouldn't need to remember two verses later instead of focusing on the didactic miracles of Christ's prophets?