Also published here: https://unexaminedfaith.blogspot.com/2020/05/nephis-alleged-courage.html

Nephi’s Alleged “Courage”

I would like to start by suggesting that if a voice in your head tells you to kill somebody, you ought to ignore that voice. If that voice tells that you ought to chop the head off of a person that is so drunk as to be unconscious, even if the unconscious drunk has property that you would like to steal, you still ought to ignore that voice.


But what if that voice in your head asserts that it is the voice of the Spirit of God? If The Almighty deigns to speak to such as you or I, surely we ought not ignore His voice…

I cannot speak for everyone, but if I had a voice in my head telling me to kill someone, even if (especially if?) that voice claimed to be the Spirit of God Himself, my most likely course of action would be to seek immediate treatment for mental illness.


However, in the LDS church, children are taught to sing a song that celebrates the very event described above. And even though it is in reference a story about following a voice in your head telling you to behead an unconscious drunk in order to facilitate stealing his property, it is sung for the purposes of teaching those children to always listen to God, to trust Him, and to be obedient to His will.




The song in question is #120 in the Children’s Songbook, “Nephi’s Courage.” The first verse tells us



The Lord commanded Nephi to go and get the plates

From the wicked Laban inside the city gates.

Laman and Lemuel were both afraid to try.

Nephi was courageous. This was his reply:



The chorus teaches the lesson that is to be instilled by singing the song:



I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands.

I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.

I will go; I will do the thing the Lord commands.

I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.



The chorus and first verse of “Nephi’s Courage” are referencing a story contained in Chapters 3 and 4 of 1st Nephi in the Book of Mormon (BoM):

3: 7 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.



Chapter 4 provides the details of how the Lord “prepared” the way (italics and underlining added for emphasis) for Nephi:



6 And I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.

7 Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I beheld a man, and he had fallen to the earth before me, for he was drunken with wine.

8 And when I came to him I found that it was Laban.

9 And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

10 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.

11 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.

12 And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands;

18 Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword.

19 And after I had smitten off his head with his own sword, I took the garments of Laban and put them upon mine own body; yea, even every whit; and I did gird on his armor about my loins.

20 And after I had done this, I went forth unto the treasury of Laban. And as I went forth towards the treasury of Laban, behold, I saw the servant of Laban who had the keys of the treasury. And I commanded him in the voice of Laban, that he should go with me into the treasury.

24 And I also spake unto him that I should carry the engravings, which were upon the plates of brass, to my elder brethren, who were without the walls.



Leaving aside the amateurish implausibility of the story[i], when innocent and impressionable LDS children are singing this song intended to instill the lesson that it is brave to be obedient to the will of God, they are actually singing about a BoM story in which Nephi listens to a voice in his head that tells him to behead an unconscious drunk so that he can steal his property.


I don’t know if I can sufficiently convey how profoundly disturbing I find this.


I’m confident that the majority of us know family and friends who experience voices in their heads. Depending on the research methodology and operational definitions,10 -70% of individuals without diagnosed mental illness have experienced hallucinatory voices (one of the studies referenced in the endnote reports that 11% of otherwise healthy university students reported hearing the voice of God) [ii] And certainly many of us live with, or have lived with, mental illness; at minimum we all know people who have. In some forms of mental illness, the prevalence of hallucinatory voices can be as high as 80%.[iii]


Imagine the harm that the lesson of “Nephi’s Courage” could do to a young person with a tendency to mental illness. After having the lesson of this song instilled through the repetition of a decade of Primary or Sunday School, and after being repeatedly taught that the BoM is “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book…” (italics added for emphasis), a young person reads the BoM, recognizes the passage from the chorus of Nephi’s Courage, and reads on to discover that that alleged courage alluded to in the title of the song is the courage to murder someone when a voice in one’s instructs it. What lesson does a young person with mental illness take away from this?


Even without taking mental illness into consideration, I recall being taught that I needed to listen to the “still small voice.”[iv] I was told that the still small voice would never guide me wrong, and that I must always be obedient to it.


If the Church is going to teach children that we must always be obedient to the voice of the spirit, and that it is courageous to commit an act that, like Nephi, they find morally objectionable[v], perhaps that lesson needs to be accompanied with certain provisos.


(i) Maybe children’s Primary lessons need to include a section on how to distinguish between hallucinatory voices in one’s head from the actual voice of the Spirit of God. Surely to teach children that they ought to follow through on morally reprehensible actions when a voice in the head tells them to, yet fail teach them how to judge between the actual voice of the Spirit of God and hallucinations would be, to say the least, irresponsible. Every person that I know who has heard voices as a symptom of illness has described them as appearing absolutely real. Certainly the President of the Church, his counsellors, and the Quorum of the 12, being Prophets, Seers, and Revelators, must have a reliable method for adjudicating which thoughts in his head are revelations and which are his own ideas (otherwise they would have no business claiming to be prophets, seers, or revelators); how easy would it be for the 15 to cobble together a guideline for the children to help them avoid following any non-revelatory voices in their heads?


(ii) Should my Sunday School lessons have included a section that taught us to “always follow the still small voice, except when it is telling you to do something wrong?”

That would, presumably, be absurd, and would imply that listening to the still small voice is not a reliable indicator of what is right. It would also directly contradict the lesson intended by repeatedly singing “Nephi’s Courage”—that listening to the spirit, even it seems to tell us to do something prima facie morally incorrect, is courageous.


(iii) Perhaps, as a variation on (ii), children could be taught a comprehensive list of what is right and wrong, and then told to follow the spirit only when it corresponds with column A. But again, this would teach the children that the spirit is an unreliable guide to the good, and would further reveal that the spirit is unnecessary for knowing the good.


More generally, what lesson does any child take away from this?


For most right thinking people, killing an unconscious victim ought not be counted as morally acceptable. I would venture that most right thinking people would find such an act, not courageous, but morally abhorrent. Most need not be actually told that killing an unconscious victim is morally repugnant because most recognize it as intrinsically wrong. The wrongness of murder is not due to its illegality, rather its illegality is due to its intrinsic wrongness. The story of Nephi’s “courage” turns that order of operations on its head. It quite contradicts the intuition that murder is intrinsically wrong, because, in order for the story to make sense, the fact that God requires the murder of Laban makes it somehow morally praiseworthy. Consequently, a necessary condition for the story to work is that murder cannot be intrinsically wrong.


Even more generally, the lesson to be derived from Nephi’s courage is the lesson of Divine Command Theory[vi]--that morality is not derived from society, norms, rules, or laws, but from the will of God.

St. Augustine of Hippo defined sin as “a word, deed, or desire in opposition to the eternal law of God.”[vii] The LDS Bible Dictionary does not offer a definition of sin, however official LDS websites suggest that sin is “[w]illful disobedience to God’s commandments,”[viii] and explain that “[t]o commit sin is to willfully disobey God's commandments or to fail to act righteously despite a knowledge of the truth (see James 4:17).”[ix] Divine Command Theory is closely conceptually linked to the notion of sin. The various formulations of Divine Command Theory share a common core: that the only foundation for ethics is found in God’s command, that God’s will is the ultimate and only source/foundation of morality/virtue/the good. That being the case, morality/virtue/goodness is defined by whether an act is performed in obedience/conformity to divine will, while the bad/evil/sin is defined by being in a volitional defiance to divine will (1st John 3:4; Romans 7: 12-14).


To offer a sufficient critique of Divine Command Theory would be too time consuming, so I refer the reader to “Zeus’s Thunderbolt, Euthyphro’s Dilemma, and the Eliminative Reduction of Sin” or to a shorter version of the same (edited for Sunstone Magazine), “Sin Does Not Exist: And Believing That It Does Is Ruining Us.”


The lesson to be derived by impressionable Primary children by singing “Nephi’s Courage” and learning about the still small voice is that God is the source of morality. What lesson can be drawn from learning that even murder is not intrinsically wrong if God tells you to do it? That nothing can be intrinsically wrong if God tells you to do it? No matter how wrong an action may be seen by society, by norms, or even by law, if God tells you do it, it is a courageous act! And how does one know if God is telling you to do something? The spirit. The voices. The still small voice. Feelings.


I put it to you, gentle reader, that this amounts to the antithesis of morality, that it creates a moral vacuum in which anything and everything is permissible. If it is okay to do whatever your feelings tell you is okay, even if it would be otherwise morally impermissible, then NOTHING is actually morally impermissible, and the lesson of Nephi’s alleged “courage” risks contributing to a culture of amorality in Mormonism.



[i] The story is amateurishly implausible. If one person holds up another person by the hair it would be mechanically impossible to swing a sword with the other arm with the force necessary to “smote” the victim’s head off. Mime the actions for yourself, you will see what I mean. And after smoting off his head, the victim’s clothes would be soaked in blood; when Nephi stole Laban’s clothes to impersonate him and steal the brass plates, Zoram (Laban’s servant) would have been suspicious.
[ii] http://www.intervoiceonline.org/research-2/research-summaries/voice-hearing-prevalence
[iii] Hugdahl K. Auditory hallucinations: A review of the ERC "VOICE" project. World J Psychiatry. 2015;5(2):193-209. doi:10.5498/wjp.v5.i2.193
[iv] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2007/08/listen-to-the-still-small-voice?lang=eng
https://littleldsideas.net/primary/sharing-time-ideas/holy-ghost/sharing-time-the-holy-ghost-speaks-in-a-still-small-voice/
[v] “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.” 1st Nephi 4:10.
[vi] There are plenty of places to find definitions of Divine Command Theory. For example: https://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/, http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/christian-ethics/divine-command-theory/, and http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g97814051067955_ss1-129
[vii] https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sin-theology
[viii] https://www.lds.org/scriptures/gs/sin
[ix] https://www.lds.org/topics/sin?lang=eng

What if you’re trying to raise a little Jeffrey Dahmer?

The Nephi/Laban episode turns mormons into moral relativists even as they insist that they believe in moral absolutes, which then exposes mormons as hypocrites. To be a mormon is necessarily to be a hypocrite.

July 2nd 1881 US President James Garfield was shot by an assassin that had heard the voice of God in his head telling him it was his duty to "remove" the president. Garfield later died from infection in his wounds.
That assassination really happened and the Nephi/Laban story is fiction, but still how do Mormons justify what Nephi is supposed to have done after hearing a voice in his head?

Right thinking?

Can you define that term beyond "people who agree with me"?

What a dangerous term.

That was the takeaway from the post? You disagreed with the usage of a term?

It's rather indicative of a whole raft of flawed thinking really.

Trying to impersonate Laban by wearing his blood-soaked clothes struck me as improbable, even when I was a child. And even in war, killing an unconscious drunk is a crime.

I like how, when you get to the end of the Book of Mormon, you actually see the words, the end. The book opens with the murder of an unconscious drunk. It sure does end unceremoniously. Older copies had the fraudulent Whitmer testimonies after the end of the book.

I have a 1830 copy of the first edition, and there are no verse divisions. It reads like a very poor novel. I think little Joey Smith liked Robinson Crusoe. Though he lacked the talent to write an adventure novel he did it anyway. A contemporary book was written King James style, so Joey tried his hand at that. When nobody wanted the book, he talked a dumb guy into mortgaging his farm to pay for a vanity pressing.

The Book of Mormon has only ever been printed by means of vanity press. This means the pressing has to be self-paid, because no third party can see any value in the content. No non-Mormon has ever seen publication value in the Book of Mormon.

For me, apart from a few details, you've summed the whole thing up in 173 words, Don, and not a 'came to pass' among them.

Now THAT is good writing ;-)

Nephi, the Mormon paragon, murdered an unconscious drunk and stole his clothes because the voice in his head told him it was God's will. Kids and adult Mormons try to push each other to be like him while giving me crap for being a horror fan. At least I know that horror movies and books are fiction.

More mind control!
Is it never ending?

I agree with you that children (not to mention adults) should never be taught that their moral intuitions or their reasoning in the context of a dilemma (moral or practical) represent the voice of God giving them instructions on how to act. Such teaching adds a false sense of certainty to actions where the results, both moral and practical, are in fact often contingent upon a host of complicating circumstances.

Notwithstanding, regarding Nephi's encounter, I think there is a more charitable reading of this story than you insist upon, and that "Nephi's Courage" suggests.

Nephi was on a practical mission that in his mind was of great importance. He had faith that the Lord would show him the way to accomplish the task. When he encountered Laban he was clearly faced with a moral dilemma that required him to weigh his moral intuitions against murder, with the practical importance of the mission. Such circumstances of inner conflict are in general extremely common. Moreover, there is no moral rule such that murder is wrong 'regardless of the circumstances.' That is because the circumstances are often laced with moral content--as this example shows.

In this case, the "Spirit" arguably represents Nephi reasoning through this moral dilemma. It would be no different in principle if Nephi characterized this dilemma as a conflict between two morally potent options; (1) kill and recover the plates for the benefit of future generations; or (2) not kill and have the mission fail. The role of the "Spirit" here is arguably just a religious validation of his rational deliberation and resolution of the dilemma; including the rationalization that Laban was evil anyway. It is NOT necessarily Nephi blindly following some voice in his head without thinking the matter through.

The problem, as I see it, is that it is one thing to use religion to validate what reason has already told you to do in the face of a moral dilemma, as arguably Nephi did here. (That is bad enough) It is quite another thing to sit back and "wait on the Spirit" to dictate an action independent of your intuitions and reasoning; as characterized by the song "Nephi's Courage." The song suggests blind obedience to inner voices, whereas Nephi was instead trying to meet a difficult challenge by rationally weighing options and outcomes within the context of his moral sensitivities.

Most people who kill someone feel that something really important in their life would fall apart unless they murdered person X. That's a pretty feeble justification.

As I mentioned above, even in a war, what Nephi supposedly did would have been considered a war crime.

Interestingly, the first Geneva Convention, which established the rules for war crimes, the rights of prisoners, etc, was negotiated by Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H Seward in 1863, signed in 1864, while Lincoln was still president.

That was right smack in the middle of the US Civil War, when Lincoln had lots of other stuff on his plate. He must have thought it very important.

When treaties and conventions are signed, the original copies with the fountain pen signatures and the red ribbons and sealing wax are given to the nation deemed most responsible for the creation of the accord. It is an honor for work well done. Two of the five Geneva Conventions done over the years are in the US National Archives. Those are our babies.

American Exceptionalism used to mean we held ourselves to a higher standard than the rest of the world. Now unfortunately it often means the rules don't apply to us.

In particular, it was two Mormons who created the US torture program after 9/11. I think a lot of Mormons didn't have a lot of problem with that. I get the feeling that Mormons don't find much that is beyond the pale if they can convince themselves that God approves. I think the Laban story in the BoM is the foundation of that attitude.

+1

Spot on, Brother of Jerry (love that name ;-)

From my observations (and as a nevermo in a country where mormonism has significantly failed to make progress in spite of the new MacTemple, I can only observe) this is true and worrying. It also reminds me of $cientology, where believers are told that truth is basically something that they can define for themselves: 'it's true if it's true for you'.

Both of these philosophical viewpoints lead to mindsets (think Nazis, convinced Stalinists or Maoists) where the cause (or the god or just what I want today) can be used to justify any action, however horrifying.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Most people who kill someone feel that something
> really important in their life would fall apart
> unless they murdered person X. That's a pretty
> feeble justification.

But, that is not the background for Nephi's predicament. Moreover, history tells us that people commit murder from their deeply entrenched ideological commitments, and not just for personal reasons. That is the motivation at work in this story; i.e. Nephi's religious and moral conviction that obtaining the plates was morally more important than the life of one evil man.
>
> As I mentioned above, even in a war, what Nephi
> supposedly did would have been considered a war
> crime.

Again, you insist upon changing the context. This was not a context of war. It was a contest involving Nephi's ideological religious commitments and his moral intuition against killing.

If you are going to challenge Nephi's actions on moral grounds you have to do so within the context of the story; not your preferred made up context.

I changed the context to one of war because war is the ultimate context where killing is allowed without repercussion, even encouraged.

If A form of killing is a crime even in war, it is pretty much a crime all the time.

Nephi should have explained to God, "look, you want me to get out of here with these plates, you keep this guy unconscious for the next 36 hours. You're God, you do crap like that all the bleeping time. Give me a break here. I'm not smoting off nobody's head, understood?"

The lesson of the story of Laban is that there is no action, no matter how immoral, that can't be justified if a voice in your head says god says do it. It is an utterly appalling lesson that gives rise to people like the Lafferty brothers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2020 10:59PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Elsewhere we read:

"And it came to pass that after he [Coriantumr] had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died."

Within the extended universe of the Book of Mormon, decapitation was no guarantee of safety from the beheadee for the beheader.

On that basis alone, I think Nephi was pretty courageous.

The OP gives excellent examples of why a person who has a voice in their mind that tells them it is God that wants you to do this horrible thing.

That would be bad if it were a true story. But, what makes this far worse is that it is not true. It is merely the thoughts of JS or whoever wrote the BoM. How sick is that?

THAT'S the real issue here, and a point that some of the posters upthread seem to have missed. Like Mormon apologists, someone was picking apart the story as if Nephi *was a real person* wrestling with a moral dilemma, which he of course was not. This was all the product of a 19th-century writer's imagination, and whoever this writer(s) was decided to have his character act this way as an illustration of what he believed to be "moral action."

If you insist on reading the Book of Mormon as an archaeological document, you will both miss the point of the stories it contains--which were made up by someone deliberately making those points--and underestimate its insidious nature. It is propaganda, not history.

Thanks for this. Talking about Nephi’s decision implies there was a Nephi.

Anziano Young Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> THAT'S the real issue here, and a point that some
> of the posters upthread seem to have missed. Like
> Mormon apologists, someone was picking apart the
> story as if Nephi *was a real person* wrestling
> with a moral dilemma, which he of course was not.
> This was all the product of a 19th-century
> writer's imagination, and whoever this writer(s)
> was decided to have his character act this way as
> an illustration of what he believed to be "moral
> action."

Your point is well taken, but the OP itself assumed (hypothetically) that the story was real. Moreover, there is no question that our moral sensitivities can be informed (for good or ill) by such stories.
>
> If you insist on reading the Book of Mormon as an
> archaeological document, you will both miss the
> point of the stories it contains--which were made
> up by someone deliberately making those
> points--and underestimate its insidious nature. It
> is propaganda, not history.

This strikes me as a bit overblown. Although, I fully agree that it is ill-advised to teach people that listening to voices in one's head is a reliable guide for moral action, the bottom line is that virtually all moral choices involve mental reasoning and a mental dialogue "in our head." Are we to set aside all of our moral intuitions when making a moral judgments? In the BoM case, it is hardly unique that a religious person would identify his or her moral reasoning and moral intuitions to God. That is just what religious people do. Do I like it? Not really. Do I find it "insidious?" Not really.

I think you misunderstand me: "insidious" because it is not a simple reporting of an event that happened in ancient Palestine, but a fable (a story with a moral) made up by a 19th-century writer to convince people to follow him. Anything the BoM says about morality stems from the culture, experiences, thinking, and goals of JS and his cohorts, not from some ancient culture.

I don't think the OP assumed, hypothetically or not, that the story is true; he even included notes at the end about its implausibility. His post focused on the modern interpretation of this story as a tool to teach children some religious "truth" about Mormonism and the absurdity of that.

Anziano Young Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think you misunderstand me: "insidious" because
> it is not a simple reporting of an event that
> happened in ancient Palestine, but a fable (a
> story with a moral) made up by a 19th-century
> writer to convince people to follow him. Anything
> the BoM says about morality stems from the
> culture, experiences, thinking, and goals of JS
> and his cohorts, not from some ancient culture.

The word "insidious" implies a hidden, bad faith, motive. I grant you that JS (or whoever wrote the BoM) may well have had such a motive when authoring the BoM. But does that translate into an insidious motive when including this particular story, as you suggest? I doubt it.

In the first place, it matters little whether the story itself is ancient or not; since the principle of following "the voice of God" is a universal religious dictate. Certainly this principle was alive and well in JS's time without the need to invoke an "ancient" story to provide authority. Second, the fact that the story is a fable, and not real history, is also a universal religious method of communicating moral precepts. The Biblical stories and parables are also fables provided to make some religious point. That, of itself, does not suggest that these writers had "insidious" motives; i.e. that they were trying to trick their readers.
>
> I don't think the OP assumed, hypothetically or
> not, that the story is true; he even included
> notes at the end about its implausibility. His
> post focused on the modern interpretation of this
> story as a tool to teach children some religious
> "truth" about Mormonism and the absurdity of that.

The very title "Nephi's Courage" and the subsequent analysis of the moral implications of the story suggests that the reader should assume (for the sake of argument) that the story is factual. The idea is that whether it *is* factual or not, it fails as a legitimate source for moral instruction.

Finally, why are ex-Mormons never satisfied that Mormonism is simply false and that the Book of Mormon simply did not happen. Why do we have to read into every story, verse of scripture, point of doctrine, moment of history, comment by leadership, etc. something insidious. Now, granted there is much that *is* insidious about Mormon origins and practices. But most of it's religious content is just false, silly, or ill-advised; much like the religious content of most or all religions. That doesn't mean that such content must also be insidious.

Jaime Williams, I would be interested in a little of your background. You're fairly new here, and have been posting some interesting things. Are you a never-mo, ex-mo, mo? A little of your life history would go a long way to understanding your posts.

I’m sure that all of us have encountered people who were passed out drunk. How many of you were courageous enough to decapitate them in order to steal their belongings?

Nephi was truly a hero.

The story of Nephi always bothered me as a TBM.

So the higher law means to be without the law?
Which sounds strangely familiar to "Do what thou wilt"

If you reread the chapter in Nephi dealing with Laban's death and just simply take out mormon brainwashing for a second (ie Nephi is the yugest hero there is) you can actually hear Satan's voice.

"And [this] Spirit said unto me again: Behold [Lucifer] 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 [what I thought should happen]; and he also had taken away our property, [and he also did not agree with me]

"And it came to pass that [this] Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for [Lucifer] hath delivered him into thy hands; [Do as thou wilt]

Without the brainwashing this is as plain as day. No wonder why Christians accuse mormons of worshipping another christ, even a false christ, because you only need a prophet to try to convince you that this treatment of God's children is okay. What parent would condone killing another of their kids in less than a fair fight?

The red sea can be parted but yet hiding/protecting Nephi after taking God's most holiest record from an inebriated soon to be sleeping man who might wake up in the afternoon to go after him - that is impossible? Once again the Mormon Jesus is lamer than lame and is the most impotent of all the gods out there.

This is no different from the mom who drowns her kids because "God" tells her to.

IMO, we should not be encouraging people to use God as justification for anything because obviously they use it to validate whatever they want to do.