Recently a decision was made in a stake
in my state not to participate in a particular service opportunity. I
am not privy to the reasons why, but my best, most understanding
guess is that the stake president felt that the nature of the
service, though it was compassionate, was too closely related to a
topic that is currently warmly debated by the two major political
parties, and that, though members of the stake could freely volunteer
to serve on their own, having that service sponsored by the stake
would create antipathy and division among church members who held
opposing political positions. Basically the stake president had a
good finger on the spiritual pulse of his stake.
In other words, they, like many of us,
had not, as a group, learned the lesson of the people of Ammon and
the Nephites.
We often discuss the heroic nature of
the “sons of Helaman”, young sons of Ammon's people, who, not
bound by their parents' oath of non-violence and full of faith in God, went to war alongside
their Nephite brothers to defend their homes and families from
annihilation. We don't often stop to consider the geopolitical state
of the place where they and the Nephites were living. Basically,
there were two groups of people living in proximity under one
government there, one group convinced that they should lay down their
lives rather than take up weapons to fight, the other, convinced that
they had a moral obligation to fight against aggressors.
When the Lamanites began to attack and
kill Ammon's people some of them were, naturally, sorely tempted to
set aside their moral convictions and religious commitment to
non-violence. It would have been easy for their neighbors, the
Nephites, to encourage them to do so and to resent their position of
non-violence when they were all threatened by the Lamanite armies.
And those of Ammon's people who were not inclined to pick up their weapons of war, but were determined to maintain their
standard of non-violence could easily have looked down upon the
Nephites who chose to fight back, seeing the Nephite belief as less noble
or inspired than theirs.
However, remarkably, these two groups,
ones we might consider political opposites in their positions when it
came to matters of military aggression, did not despise, argue with
or contest with each other. Instead of becoming divided by their
differing political opinions, they supported each other in their
respective rights to act according to their moral positions. The
people of Ammon were supportive (and likely also grateful) for the
protection of the Nephites who volunteered to fight off the Lamanites
who were attacking them. It would have been a natural human response
to be, instead, simultaneously dismissive of the Nephites' position that military might is a
necessary skill to learn, perfect and use. It would have been easy
for them to insist, therefore, that their sons choose non-violent
response as well. But they did not. They allowed their sons to make their own choices. Remarkably, the Nephite
position was similarly respectful. They actually encouraged the
people of Ammon who had made a sacred commitment to non-violence to
maintain that commitment while, at the same time, intending to do
whatever was necessary to fight of the Lamanites who sought to
destroy them both. They respected the people of Ammon's moral
response to a terrifying situation even while they felt a moral
responsibility to respond in a way that was directly the opposite.
Here were two politically opposing views in a
desperate time, each held by people who understood that they were
divinely tied to each other by their faith in God. The result of
that understanding was not only eventual victory over the aggressors
(at a terrible cost, as is often the case), but even, perhaps more
profound, a sense of unity of brotherhood and respect for freedom to
respond according to conscience had played out between those two
groups and had transcended their widely differing and opposite
personal responses to a political crisis. What could have created
division, resentment and discord, instead created mutual respect for
differing positions and willingness to honestly respect and
coordinate with each other's choices of how to respond.
It is interesting to contemplate just
how much that amazing phenomenon may have played into the successes
in the chapters that followed both during the subsequent war, and
also in the peace between them in the years that followed.
I whole heartedly believe that “If ye
are not one, ye are not mine”. And I believe that that doesn't
mean that we must all see eye to eye or agree on issues. I believe
that the story of the people of Ammon and their neighboring Nephites
teaches that we can love and respect each other enough to
work respectfully, unitedly and for the common good, each in a way
that he or she feels called by God to do, in spite of how different our calls to action may be, or how widely our political and
social positions differ.
It is hard to do, but I believe that
peaceable, mutual respect in spite of glaring, seemingly
insurmountable differences of deeply held opinions about what course
of action to personally take is one of the keys to Zion.
