On Being Stirred Up to Anger

Over the past few years, and even more frequently in the past few months, I have had multiple conversations with people about the amount of anger that exists in our times. Certainly, the 21st century doesn't have a corner on the hatred market, but its presence seems to be trending upward almost everywhere you go. As a person who believes in God and in the existence of a world beyond the merely physical, a world in which the forces of Evil are pitted against the forces of Good in a great battle for the souls of men and women everywhere, I believe that one of the primary weapons employed by Evil is to "[stir] up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another"(3 Nephi 11:29). The Book of Mormon prophesies that in the last days Satan will "rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good" (2 Nephi 28:20). Anger is one of the children of Pride and is thus almost as universal as its parent. Some people seem to have a natural disposition of coolness of mind, but the majority of us battle regularly with feelings of anger, resentment, and hatred. Some choose to give in to the temptation to be angry. They let it simply wash over them any time the inclination presents itself, with neither a thought to resist it nor remorse when it passes. Others fight tremendously against its influence, with tireless vigilance and bitter sorrow when a single enemy soldier breaks through the lines.

It seems that the opposition is succeeding with increasing frequency in the use of anger to bring about sorrow and misery in the lives individuals, families, communities, and nations across the earth. What are the causes of this increase in the world today? In offering at least a partial answer to this question, I will look to the Book of Mormon, it being written for the express purpose of guiding the people of our day through the challenges of modernity foreseen by ancient prophets and "land their souls" (Hel. 3:29-30) in a "far better land of promise" (Alma 37:44-45).

Throughout the Book of Mormon we follow the history of two peoples that were brought by God to the New World at different times in the history of the Old. Both found their destruction after several centuries of living on the American continents, and anger proved to play an important role in that destruction. The people whose history occupies the greatest volume of pages in the Book of Mormon is the one derived from the family of a man named Lehi, whom God brought out of Jerusalem around 600 years before Christ. Lehi had four sons when he left Jerusalem; Laman and Lemuel, the older, and Sam and Nephi, the younger. Through a series of events during their journey to the New World, a schism cleaved their family in two, leaving two distinct groups, one formed by the families of Laman and Lemuel, and one by the families of Nephi and Sam. Nephi and Sam's families took on the name Nephites, while the families of Laman and Lemuel were referred to as Lamanites.

Nephi, being the one chosen by God to follow his father as the leader and prophet to God's people in the New World, was told that the descendants of his older brothers would vex Nephi's own posterity and serve as a means of "[stirring] them up in the ways of remembrance" (1 Nephi 2:24) when they would forget God. Over and over and over again throughout the entirety of the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites would come against the Nephites in war, thus "stirring" them up to remember their God. Repeatedly the Lamanite leaders were able to convince their people to go to war against the Nephites, even though they could never seem to beat them in battle. I have often wondered how the leaders of the Lamanites were able to successfully enrage their people enough to get them to attack the Nephites after being beaten back multiple times. The answer is interesting and bears significantly on our day.

In the tenth chapter of the Book of Mosiah, one of several books in the Book of Mormon, we learn that it was the "tradition of their fathers" that continually stoked the burning hatred in the hearts of the Lamanites, leading them to war and to the persecution of the Nephites. It then explains the nature of that tradition in these words describing the Lamanites:

12 They were a wild, and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, believing in the tradition of their fathers, which is this--Believing that they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem because of the iniquities of their fathers, and that they were wronged in the wilderness by their brethren, and they were also wronged while crossing the sea;
13 And again, that they were wronged while in the land of their first inheritance, after they had crossed the sea, and all this because that Nephi was more faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord--therefore he was favored of the Lord, for the Lord heard his prayers and answered them, and he took the lead of their journey in the wilderness.
14 And his brethren were wroth with him because they understood not the dealings of the Lord; they were also wroth with him upon the waters because they hardened their hearts against the Lord.
15 And again, they were wroth with him when they had arrived in the promised land, because they said that he had taken the ruling of the people out of their hands; and they sought to kill him.
16 And again, they were wroth with him because he departed into the wilderness as the Lord had commanded him, and took the records which were engraven on the plates of brass, for they said that he robbed them.
17 And thus they have taught their children that they should hate them, and that they should murder them, and that they should rob and plunder them, and do all they could to destroy them; therefore they have an eternal hatred towards the children of Nephi.

One comes to find out, as you read the story of Lehi and his family leaving Jerusalem and traveling to the New World, that all of the accusations of Nephi's brothers, which were transmitted from generation to generation, were untrue, changing the facts of the story to favor Laman and Lemuel and make Nephi out to be a villain. The shaping of the facts of history and of news to form a story that justifies your anger is an important element of Satan's efforts to "rage in our hearts," but setting aside the the truth of the accusations, another principle emerges. Lamanite parents and leaders were constantly telling their children and the public that they had been "wronged" in the past, that they are being "wronged" now, and that the Nephites will continue to "wrong" them forever if given the chance. Teaching their children that they are continual victims of the Nephites, obsessing about their victimhood, and demonizing the Nephites formed the substance of what motivated the Lamanites to the reckless hate that drove them to violence and other crimes against the Nephites, latching on to the minds of each generation like a cancerous gene embedded in their cultural DNA.

Later on in the history of the Nephites and Lamanites, at a time when at least some of them had managed to get past the generational hatred of their forebears, another group came to wage war against both peoples. This group was made up, for the most part, by people that had dissented away from among the Nephites and the reconciled Lamanites. They were known as "the Gadianton robbers", and their existence, as the Lamanites before them, consisted of hating, robbing, plundering, murdering, and seeking to destroy the Nephites. And what do you suppose fueled their hatred? Let's read from the book of Third Nephi chapter three. In this passage the leader of the robbers, Giddianhi, had written a letter to the leader of the Nephites, demanding that they surrender up all of their lands and possessions to the robbers or they would take them by bloodshed. In his letter Giddianhi says this:

2 Lachoneus, most noble and chief governor of the land, behold, I write this epistle unto you, and do give unto you exceedingly great praise because of your firmness, and also the firmness of your people, in maintaining that which ye suppose to be your right and liberty; yea, ye do stand well, as if ye were supported by the hand of a god, in the defence of your liberty, and your property, and your country, or that which ye do call so.
3 And it seemeth a pity unto me, most noble Lachoneus, that ye should be so foolish and vain as to suppose that ye can stand against so many brave men who are at my command, who do now at this time stand in their arms, and do await with great anxiety for the word--Go down upon the Nephites and destroy them.
4 And I, knowing of their unconquerable spirit, having proved them in the field of battle, and knowing of their everlasting hatred towards you because of the many wrongs which ye have done unto them, therefore if they should come down against you they would visit you with utter destruction.
5 Therefore I have written this epistle, sealing it with mine own hand, feeling for your welfare, because of your firmness in that which ye believe to be right, and your noble spirit in the field of battle.
6 Therefore I write unto you, desiring that ye would yield up unto this my people, your cities, your lands, and your possessions, rather than that they should visit you with the sword and that destruction should come upon you.
7 Or in other words, yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us--not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance.
8 And behold, I swear unto you, if ye will do this, with an oath, ye shall not be destroyed; but if ye will not do this, I swear unto you with an oath, that on the morrow month I will command that my armies shall come down against you, and they shall not stay their hand and shall spare not, but shall slay you, and shall let fall the sword upon you even until ye shall become extinct.
9 And behold, I am Giddianhi; and I am the governor of this the secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good; and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us.
10 And I write this epistle unto you, Lachoneus, and I hope that ye will deliver up your lands and your possessions, without the shedding of blood, that this my people may recover their rights and government, who have dissented away from you because of your wickedness in retaining from them their rights of government, and except ye do this, I will avenge their wrongs. I am Giddianhi.

Again we find a continual fixation on the "wrongs" that had been committed against them, the truth of which, again, does not bear out in the record. But the truth of the accusations aside, it's the victim culture and the broad villainization of others that I would like to focus on and their connection to hatred strong enough to destroy societies and persistent enough to be passed on like an heirloom to the next generation. It was, in part, "the many wrongs which ye have done unto them" that helped to transform the atrocities that they committed into the perceived "good works" of their secret society. Murder, deception, theft, oppression, and destruction all become noble when seen in the light of "avenging" the endless wrongs committed against the perpetual victims in such a culture.

I believe the Book of Mormon to be written not only to "the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ" (Title Page to the Book of Mormon), but to the illuminating of patterns of culture, government, belief, philosophy, and personal behavior that lead a society to destruction. Such a warning comes to us in hopes that we may avoid the same fate and to recognize the signs of the times. With this in mind, I observe the world today, looking for signs of victim cultures, demonization, and the wake of hatred left by their passage, and I seem to see them everywhere. Often, as with the brothers of Nephi, I find the accusations to be largely untrue. They seem to be warped versions of the truth, made by those with an interest in "stirring up the people to anger." But even when the wrongs of the past are legitimate, the inability to let them go will always impede the efforts to establish peace today.

You can to decide for yourself if victim cultures exist in modern society, but certainly they proved to be a major force in the centuries of war and the ultimate destruction of the Nephite civilization. If we are concerned about the hatred and anger in our society and in the world at large, we would do well to ask ourselves to what extent have we have personally embraced any version of a culture of victimhood and demonization and how we perpetuate that to our children and to others around us.

Do I mean that we should never stand up for someone in need? Or that there are not people who are truly oppressed and who need our help? Certainly not! We just need to exercise wisdom and good judgement. If we are constantly fixating on the idea that our ancestors, or those of any other group, were heinously wronged in the past and that the blood or perceived ideological descendants of the perpetrators are still seeking to oppress and abuse us to the current day, we could soon find our hate running wildly into the ever deepening thickets of unjust behavior. We might easily find ourselves transforming our excursions through wickedness and aggression into acts of honor by viewing the supposed evil of those we trespass against. We could, in the end, find ourselves soiled by the "good works" of avenging the wrongs of society.

For those who believe that the Book of Mormon is true, it is hard to overstate the importance of this principle, it being the driving force behind most of the violence recorded in that book. For those who do not believe that the Book of Mormon is true, it is hard to explain how Joseph Smith could be so insightful as to be able to predict the future with such amazing accuracy.