What mom would have called stick toit-iveness

So mom - thank you.

I thought I'd keep going on 1 Nephi 3 today. Finished the chapter - not much. I noticed some very different levels of commitment in this story. First you have Laman etc that went grudgingly back to Jerusalem, then drew the short straw and went in to ask Laban for the brass plates. I'm sure he waddled in, asked to meet Laban, then asked him for the plates, then was thrown out. "Oh well", he might have said "at least I tried".

He got nothing out of the game because he put nothing in it. He made a minimal effort, did nothing to convince Laban as to why Laban wanted to do it, and made it more difficult for the task to be completed on a later effort. It might have been a bit of a sabotage - "I'm going to go through the motions, but I'm going to make sure this mission fails so I can say I was right". I certainly know some people who do that sort of thing. More than one.

So Laman is ready to quit. From my point of view, he had done what he came to do: prove that Lehi and Nephi are both idiots, and that they should be set aside so he can run things his way. Evil men will do this. Men will do this when they're listening with the wrong ears. Not uncommon in my mind - not at all.

But Nephi is on a different errand. He's not there to say he tried. His errand is not what he twists it to be - his errand is the Lord's. The Lord says that he's there to get the plates, so he does things Nephi's way: he gathers up all of Lehi's hidden/stored gold and silver and takes it to Laban. Note that this is not something Laman was willing to do. Did he think he'd come back to it after an excursion in the desert? Apparently so.

But Nephi goes all in. Everything that could capture Laban's eye. Not "enough" or "this is a fair price", but everything his father owned - everything Nephi could put together. He knew that gold was there for one purpose, and he used it for that. He sold out; he committed. He didn't hold back.

And that was taken. Still no plates. Now Laban & company was pissed! The gold they were planning on coming back to? It was gone. What fun is it to depose your brother and your father and come back to a house without gold?

Things got serious. A rod was produced and it was used on Nephi and his brother. It seems they had lost the one thing that mattered most to Laban - which simultaneously meant the least to Nephi - the gold. Nephi knew it was a treasure left behind years ago, whose only potential value was as a bargaining chip. Laban thought it was the measure of his manhood.

Which is interesting in itself because Laban probably didn't earn any of it. Lehi did. But so often we think we're awesome because of what our parents (eternal or earthly) give us. Am I suddenly awesome because daddy gave me a car? Does that hunk of metal make me cooler than being given a new toothbrush? Either way it's a gift; something I didn't earn. Perhaps appreciating that gift makes me more of a man, but being proud of myself for it and thinking I'm greater for possessing it probably makes me less - not more.

Same applies for heavenly gifts. I try to remind myself of that often.

So now all earthly means have been used. Nephi, without and despite the "help" of his brother has now done everything that was in his power, and failed. Laman's response is to start hitting people with sticks. Nephi knows that now it's in the Lord's hands and he remains steadfast. This is the moment the Lord has been waiting for. The Lord provides the means. He saves the plates and saves a continent of people, but this only happens because there was a man involved who sold out, who committed, and didn't walk away from his assigned task with "well at least I tried".

Laman would have used the experience to prove that angels, dreams and God's guidance are a pile of bunk - and based on his actions and interpretations, he would have been able to "prove" he was right. Nephi did things another way.

So the question is this: which one of these are we?