One lower light shining

Today I was reading in 2nd Nephi 26:

11 For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with man then cometh speedy destruction, and this grieveth my soul.

(2 Nephi 26:11)

Believe it or not, this doom-and-gloom verse actually gave me a great deal of hope and optimism. How so? I’ll explain.

In our modern, secular society, it’s very easy to find wickedness and moral corruption. Most of the time, people don’t even consider it to be wrong. People are calling evil good and good evil all over the place; just go to the movies, or listen to the music on the radio, or look at what people are wearing. Because our secular society is not informed by the gospel, our social norms often have very little to do with gospel truths and principles.

And yet, in spite of all this wickedness, our society has not been “speedily destroyed.”

Like Jonah at Ninevah, we may be tempted to ask why. After all, wickedness is everywhere! But, at the same time, it’s not all doom-and-gloom. We can still find righteousness and nobility in our culture, even outside of the church community. People who commit evil still have some good in them; they still have the ability to repent. Besides, there are still many good people in our society!

As a sign of this, we can consider the fact that God hasn’t “speedily destroyed” us yet. He hasn’t given up on us. I’m not talking about the church here, I’m talking about the people outside of the church, the people in mainstream America. If we believe in the Book of Mormon, we believe that when a society becomes completely depraved, God allows them to be destroyed. Well, we’re still here.

And if we’re still here, that means that the Spirit hasn’t given up on us yet. He’s still striving with us, despite our wickedness, urging us to repent.

What does that mean?

Well, if the Spirit is still striving with us, we should be able to feel it, to see its effects. If He’s striving with our mainstream, secular society, we should be able to see those effects within mainstream, secular society. People recognizing wickedness and evil for what it is, feeling a desire to look for something good, something true. People doing good to each other, being kind, even being Christlike from time to time–outside of the church!

I think that when we get pessimistic about the moral depravity of our modern society, most of the time we’re simply projecting our own fears and frustrations onto our view of the world, not seeing things as they really are. Yes, there is wickedness and evil in this world–but there is also the supreme potential for good, even in some of the most depraved people. A true disciple of Christ has the faith to see the good in all things. As we read in the book of Moroni:

19 Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ.

(Moroni 7:19)

Anyway, those were my thoughts as I read 2 Nephi 26 today. If we as a nation haven’t been wiped off the map, the Spirit must not have given up on us yet, and if the Spirit is still striving for us, there’s still some good in us. We just need to find it and recognize it.

They say that Isaiah makes a lot more sense in Hebrew, since so much is lost in the translation to English.  That may be true, but when you translate it from English into Arabic (a Semitic language very much like Hebrew), you get some of the interesting wordplays and poetic language that was lost in English.

As an example, 2 Nephi 17:

1 And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it.

2 And it was told the house of David, saying: Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.

3 Then said the Lord unto Isaiah: Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field;

4 And say unto him: Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah.

5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying:

6 Let us go up against Judah and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, yea, the son of Tabeal.

7 Thus saith the Lord God: It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass.

8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus, Rezin; and within three score and five years shall Ephraim be abroken that it be not a people.

9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son. If ye will not believe surely ye shall not be established.

(2 Nephi 17: 1-8)

The bolded phrases in Arabic are:

لا تَقُومُ, لا تَكُونُ

إنْ لَمْ تُؤْمِنُوا فَلا تَأْمَنُوا

In romanized lettering, this is what it sounds like (with doubled vowels reprsenting long vowel sounds, single vowels representing short vowel sounds):

7 la taquumu, la takuunu

9 in lam tu’minuu, fala ta’minuu.

So, what am I getting at here?  That Isaiah was a poet.  We read his words translated into English, and it sounds dense and hard to read, but translated into a Semitic language like Arabic, it’s lighter and full of subtle word plays.  Not only are there simple rhyming schemes thrown in like this, but most of the stuff that takes us five or ten words to say in English is only one or two words in Arabic.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Isaiah is easy in Arabic–at least, not for an intermediate student like me who hasn’t yet mastered the language.  Virtually 80% of the vocabulary is completely over my head–words where I’m unfamiliar with the root (and sometimes the wazin, too =P ).  I’ve got to admit, I’ve been somewhat bogged down in this part of the Book of Mormon for that very reason.

However, the Isaiah passages essentially end at 2 Nephi 25, so I’ve only got about eight more chapters to go.  Not too difficult.  Hopefully, I’ll be on to the easier stuff in a week or two–the stuff that translates into Arabic words I already know.

In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for cool little rhyming schemes like these.   If Arabic were my native language and vocabulary weren’t an issue for me, Isaiah would be eminently more readable in Arabic than in English.

Here are just some of my quick thoughts on 2 Nephi 2.

I’m reading the Book of Mormon very quickly right now for a general overview.  This is a very interesting exercise, because when you take a step back to look at the forest instead of focusing so hard on each of the trees, you can see things you didn’t see before.

Stephen E. Robinson wrote what I believe is the best book on the subject of the Gospel outside of the canon of scripture: Believing Christ. In it, he shows how the LDS church and the restored gospel actual teach that we are saved by grace, not works; that we can experience salvation immediately, not just at the day of judgment; that perfection in Christ is something completely different than absolute personal perfection, and that we can be saved even if we are imperfect in keeping all of the commandments of God all of the time.

To sum up Brother Robinson’s point in a sentence or two, basically the gospel is all about Jesus, not about the commandments.  Jesus saves us; keeping the commandments is our goal, but when we inevitably fail to be 100% righteous 100% of the time, Christ still saves us.  If we look to our commandments, our image of the perfect Molly Mormon, our idealistic dreams of “perfection,” whatever that is–if we look to all of this to save us, we will not be saved:

5 And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil. And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or, by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever.
6 Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth.

2 Nephi 2:5-6

Reading over this chapter quickly, without taking time to delve into the hundreds of rich nuances and implications of the doctrines contained in this marvelous chapter, it is abundantly clear to me that only Christ–only Christ–saves us. Our own righteousness does not save us. The intents of our heart do not save us. The commandments do not save us. Those hundred things different things we should be doing, but aren’t, and feel guilty about not doing them–even if we were doing them all, it wouldn’t save us.

Only Christ saves us. If we are true disciples of Jesus, nothing in this world–not even our own sins, our own mistakes, or our own guilt–can keep us from being saved.

It just doesn’t get old. This is the message of the gospel, and it’s everywhere. It’s certainly in the book of second Nephi.