1 Nephi 15

(January 13, 2014)
This may seem like a tangent, but I promise that I will come back to my impressions reading this chapter in a moment.  Shusaku Endo wrote one of the best, and most haunting, novels of all time – Silence.  Most people read that book as the story of Father Rodrigues and his struggles to maintain his faith and understand God.  But tagging along with Father Rodrigues is a clumsy apostate named Kichijiro.  Kichijiro causes nothing but trouble, and never stands up for what is right.

When Shusaku Endo was attending a lecture here in the United States, someone once asked him about Kichijiro.  They phrased the question in such a way that they praised the book and the characters (except Kichijiro), and then asked Endo why he included Kichijiro.  They said that Kichijiro served only as a distraction from the point of the story.

Endo listened to the question through his translator, and then asked the question be repeated.  He clearly couldn’t understand what was being asked.  After a bit of explanation, however, the question came through and Endo’s astonishment became apparent by his response.  His answer was simple – “Kichijiro is me.”

Here is how this relates back to the scriptures.  It is a hard lesson to learn, but I have realized that I have been reading 1 Nephi backwards.  It is not the story of Nephi (although that is important) – it is the story of Laman and Lemuel.  Laman and Lemuel are not villains or foils for Nephi and Lehi – they are children of God who (like us) are in a state of rebellion against God.

Looking at it that way, it is easier to see the mercies of the Lord in their lives (and in ours).  Laman and Lemuel, we think, should have been cut off a long time ago.  But the Lord continues to give them opportunity after opportunity to repent and to change.  It seems He gives them more opportunities than we think that they should have.  But at the same time, He is giving us far more opportunities than we should have, too.

The lesson to learn is to watch the life of Laman and Lemuel and find out how we can stop following their path that leads to destruction and instead find our way on to the path that leads to salvation.  But reading this, the patience of the Lord with Laman and Lemuel (and each of us) is among the mercies of the Lord that I feel we are to remember when we enact Moroni’s promise in Moroni 10.