Come Follow Me (Mosiah 11-17)
The Book of Mosiah has some of the most brilliant commentary about government in the entire Book of Mormon - both the best of it, as in Mosiah 1-5, and some of its worst, as in Mosiah 11-17.
Benjamin was a stellar public servant worth emulating. He's a perfect foil with whom to contrast the corrupt and morally bankrupt King Noah described in Mosiah chapter 11. This chapter underscores Gordon B. Hinckley's statement that reading the Book of Mormon daily could often be confused with reading a current-day newspaper.
This key phrase sets off a horrible checklist of corruption: "he had changed the affairs of the kingdom." (Mosiah 11:4)
Change indeed. To really appreciate the change - read chapters 1 and 2 to see how Benjamin raised his children and served as king, and then get on your trusty neck brace before you read chapter 11 so you won't get whiplash. And even though Noah's kingdom had completely separated from King Benjamin's/Mosiah's kingdom for at least one generation, the contrast is worth noting because in the space of "not many years" (Helaman 11:26), a group of people who started out as largely self-governing had almost completely given themselves to licentiousness.
Note the eerie similarities in our current situation to that of King Noah's people after the affairs of the kingdom had been changed:
King Noah's wickedness justified the people's wickedness and vice versa (verse 2).
High taxation supported a debauched, idolatrous, excessive lifestyle - which allowed King Noah and his priests to live off the work of others and not support themselves (verses 3-4, 14-15).
High taxation also paid for expensive government trappings - which only served to accentuate a different class: those who 'governed' and the ordinary people (verses 8-11).
King Noah replaced his father's priests with his own yes-men who would support his unrighteous decrees (verse 5).
The people "labored exceedingly" to pay these taxes to "support iniquity" (verse 6).
Yet King Noah and his priests deceived the people with vain and flattering speech, leading the whole nation into idolatry. No doubt this flattering speech justified taking an exorbitant portion of their living by telling them they would benefit from it (verse 7).
National surveillance was established (verse 12).
Even with all that excessive taxation, King Noah didn't manage and maintain sufficient national defense to protect the people - the number one role of government (verses 16-17).
A pattern emerges throughout the Book of Mormon where laziness and indolence are paired with idolatry. It's repeatedly used to describe the lifestyle of primarily the Lamanite nations. In the miraculous conversion of those Lamanites who come to be known as the Anti-Nephi-Lehis (Alma 23), Mormon particularly mentions that one of the significant changes in their lifestyle was that they became industrious.
Since these vices show up together so often throughout the book, it begs the question: does laziness lead people into idolatry? Or is laziness idolatry?
No wonder people who are committed to this kind of lifestyle don't want anyone telling them it's not a good choice. And that includes that same person warning them there are divine consequences for that choice.
This is where the children in the room like to put their fingers in their ears and shout loudly, "LA LA LA LA LA."
I started calling this reaction to reality the Pharisee Disease many years ago. As I studied the Pharisees' reaction to Jesus' teaching, it struck me how very much they had invested in their lifestyles and how important it was to their way of life that Jesus was wrong. He had to be wrong, or they had to change.
And who wants to change? Absolutely no one, that's who. If you're not quickened by the Spirit, absolutely 100% of natural humans are absolutely 100% committed to staying exactly as they are.
Because entropy.
Entropy, atrophy, and all the forces of the universe which demand effort against chaos are real and cannot be denied. And effort demands the legitimate pain of discipline, as Scott Peck called it.
And doughnuts. And Netflix.
Few of us want to look too closely at our first response to new information that might require change from us. I wince just writing that. If you don't want something to be true, you enter the hypothesis of its possible truth with a huge bias most of us don't want to admit.
If you have zero intention of accepting the truth and changing your behavior - or bigger still, your lifestyle - to accommodate it, then you'll view a potentially new truth as an enemy - because of its potential to completely dismantle your habits, livelihood, belief system, world view, etc. It would "destroy [your] craft." (Alma 35:3)
You can tell King Noah, his priests, and his people didn't want Abinadi's warnings to be true because of this very natural human response to new information. They didn't want it to be true because of what it would require of them if it were.
But that pesky thought in the back of every human brain: what if it is true? - is behind all the vitriol hurled at Abinadi. It explains their reaction over two thousand years ago, and it explains the world's reaction to basic absolute truths today.
That checklist earlier of changes to the government aren't the problem. They're symptoms of a much larger problem - the spiritually lethal germ in human thinking which tricks us into imagining we can insulate ourselves from reality.
Humans attempt this through the ease and comfort of wealth, in the deceptive safety of a peer group of like-minded people, through power and influence, or with enough power and influence, even with laws which eventually - inevitably - lead to the criminalization of the truth and the speakers of truth.
Maybe laziness really is idolatry. If humans are that committed to staying as they are, have they made ease and comfort their god? There's certainly a staggering degree of obeisance to it and rapid responses to anything which threatens it.
This pattern can be seen over and over in the Book of Mormon - starting with Lehi's family. Watch for it - watch how both individuals and collective groups respond to truth, and what happens as a result of that choice. The road map of destruction can always be traced back to this first fatal step - not wanting truth to be real. After millennia of feeble, futile attempts filled with false bravado, the best thinkers of the ages can almost be heard saying, "Best of luck with that."
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