A Story about Taking Something Away

I was reading in Alma 55 recently about the story of the Lamanite guards of the city of Gid who are lulled to sleep with wine provided by Nephite-aligned Lamanites. There was a verse in the story near the beginning that suddenly stuck out to me.  Laman has told the guards about the wine he’s stolen from the Nephites in his daring escape, and the guards get excited to try some.

But Laman said unto them: Let us keep of our wine till we go against the Nephites to battle. But this saying only made them more desirous to drink of the wine; (Alma 55:10)

Since we know what happened in this story, it is pretty obvious to us that the wisest thing for the Lamanite guards to do would be wait.  But for some reason, the guards don’t want to be prudent; they want to indulge themselves. They want it now, not later. This made me think that learning to self-impose deferred gratification is an important skill.

But then I thought about what Laman had done in the story. He showed them the wine, and then he essentially attempts to pull it away. If we have troubles imagining the effect this has, we can substitute cookies or ice cream instead….   Laman showed them the tasty-looking cookies, and then he pulled them away and said, “Let’s keep it until just before battle.”   The Lamanite guards have seen the cookies, they’ve smelled the cookies, they now have cookies on the brain. What Laman has done here is essentially to target-lock the guards’ brains on the cookies. They want the cookies NOW!  If the cookies are taken away, they’re going to get resentful and mad.

Not only has Laman put wine on the guards’ brain, he has gotten them laser-focused on the very thing that will be their undoing. (We know the wine is extra powerful stuff.) As a result of getting drunk, they lose all the prisoners they were supposed to guard, and they lose their own freedom.

So we can see two different spiritual life lessons about strategy here when we look at things from the Lamanite guards’ perspective.

Lesson #1: Train your ability to defer gratification.

Lesson #2: Look out for when something is offered and then pulled away. Realize that this will cause you to fixate on the thing being pulled away. (Try not to do this to others too.) It will take extra work to think about whether it is a good thing to want in the first place.

Introduction of "To Defend Them By Stratagem"

I thought I'd post the introduction to my new book To Defend Them By Strategem so you could get a sense of how I approached the topic and whether you might find this book helpful or not.

Introduction

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I have always loved the war chapters in the Book of Mormon. Growing up, when my family read the Book of Mormon around the dinner table, I listened with breathless interest to the stories of Captain Moroni, Teancum, and Helaman’s stripling warriors. I reveled in Captain Moroni’s cleverness, Teancum’s intrepidity, and the stripling warriors’ sheer heroism and courage. Every Nephite victory was cause for celebration; every Lamanite victory brought disappointment. 

Multiple reads through the Book of Mormon embedded these stories of victory and defeat deep in my consciousness, and as I grew older I started to wonder why Mormon had decided to write in such detail about the wars when the purpose of the whole book was to testify of Christ’s divinity.

Eventually, I began to understand how the Lord meant for us to learn from those battles. Just as Captain Moroni thought it no sin to defend the Nephites by stratagem, the Lord thought it no sin to use war stories in the scriptures to teach His people strategies to help them recognize and defend against the ugly temptations and sins of world, especially during times when temptations would abound in both blatant and subtle ways.

In the Church, we have a lot to say about the sterling character of Captain Moroni and the stripling warriors, but as a people, we have not yet collectively discovered the wonderful array of battle strategies presented throughout the whole Book of Mormon. So why is this? 

The Church’s Sunday School curriculum calls for the Book of Mormon war chapters, Alma 43-62, to be treated in the space of two lessons. Only 90 minutes every four years is spent to study 19 chapters spanning 52 pages, giving us less than two minutes per page. There is not enough time to cover the material in the manuals, and the manuals only cover a fraction of what could be discussed. The Church focuses on teaching fundamental gospel principles while trusting and encouraging members to learn more through focused individual study. 

Still, because of the cursory attention of the church manuals, it is tempting to treat the war stories lightly. Some members see the derring-do only as thrilling entertainment, while other particularly peace-loving members are disgusted with all the violence and struggle to find any redeeming qualities in the chapters beyond the heroes of Captain Moroni, Teancum, Helaman, and the stripling warriors.

While I know that sooner or later members of the Church will individually be led to understand the treasures hidden in the stories of war, I also believe that I can do a service by speeding up the process. The battle strategies are of key importance; they are a big part of what made the Book of Mormon heroes the mighty men they were, and unless we can learn to recognize and master the strategies they used and defend effectively against attacks the way they did, we can never hope to reach their stature.

The events of the war chapters in Alma 43-62 are filtered through the eyes of not just one prophet-general, but two—Helaman and Mormon. In his record, Helaman featured events he found important in his day, and then centuries later, Mormon made his abridgement from Helaman’s record. The years between Helaman and Mormon probably gave Mormon valuable perspective, allowing him to better interpret for our edification the events Helaman recorded.

Many have observed that we are not in a war of physical violence; we are in a spiritual war for souls in which no holds are barred. Satan has had all of human history to learn the most effective ways to attack. We need to make a tactical science of spiritual survival in these last days, and there is no better way to do it than to learn from history by studying the war strategies in the Book of Mormon. Every tactic and strategy of field warfare has its spiritual equivalent, so we don’t have to be a member of the military to apply them in life. 

In this book, you will learn about tactics that Satan uses against us. You will learn about tactics you can use to defend yourself. You also will learn strategies that will allow you to go on the offensive. 

You may begin this book with the notion that Nephite tactics are always good and Lamanite tactics are always bad. This notion is comforting, but it effectively halves the usefulness of the war accounts. We can easily compare how the Nephites defend themselves to how we should defend ourselves against Satan, but we can also examine how the Lamanites’ failed defenses show us where our weak spots are. Also, we are used to comparing Lamanite attacks to Satan’s attacks, but we also can learn how the Nephites’ successful attacks to regain cities might be similar to ways Satan attacks us today.

Structure of the book

We will begin where war starts to appear in the Book of Mormon record—at the Words of Mormon as Mormon describes some of the struggles of King Benjamin. The chapters are in the order that the stories and incidents appear in the Book of Mormon, so if you are fairly familiar with the sequence of events as you read from front to back in the Book of Mormon, you will be able to follow fairly well. 

This book is broken up into chapters, each of which talk about important strategies we can learn from war in the Book of Mormon. Some of them start out by examining features of battles or incidents that seem a bit puzzling or that don’t seem to make sense. Most of the chapters are fairly short and can be read quickly. The very last chapter is a longer, detailed examination of how the war chapters reveal ways we can defend ourselves against the increasing threat of pornography.

Assumptions and Speculation

There are some times when I will make assumptions or speculate about how things were in Book of Mormon times. It is my attempt to “fill in the holes,” so to speak. You will recognize that I have made some speculative assumptions when I say something “may have” or “probably” happened a certain way. In each case, I will explain how I arrived at each conclusion. Caveats and provisos aside, ONWARD, Christian soldiers! (Author waves sword above head)

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Some thoughts on Lehi’s army shielding and attacking

35 And as the Lamanites had passed the hill Riplah, and came into the valley, and began to cross the river Sidon, the army which was concealed on the south of the hill, which was led by a man whose name was Lehi, and he led his army forth and encircled the Lamanites about on the east in their rear.

36 And it came to pass that the Lamanites, when they saw the Nephites coming upon them in their rear, turned them about and began to contend with the army of Lehi.

37 And the work of death commenced on both sides, but it was more dreadful on the part of the Lamanites, for their nakedness was exposed to the heavy blows of the Nephites with their swords and their cimeters, which brought death almost at every stroke.

38 While on the other hand, there was now and then a man fell among the Nephites, by their swords and the loss of blood, they being shielded from the more vital parts of the body, or the more vital parts of the body being shielded from the strokes of the Lamanites, by their breastplates, and their armshields, and their head-plates; and thus the Nephites did carry on the work of death among the Lamanites. (Ama 43:35-38)

In these verses is described how the army leader Lehi encircled the invading Lamanites in the rear, which forced them to turn and fight, and how the unarmored Lamanites were killed at almost every stroke while the armored Nephites only occasionally fell from the loss of blood.

It hit me that there are several strategies used here that are often missed.

First, Lehi’s men attacked the rear of the Lamanite army. It is possible the Lamanites front-loaded their greatest and most confident warriors and put the weakest at the back. If so, then attacking their rear gave Lehi’s men an advantage and not just that of surprise.

Second, it says the Lamanites were exposed and nearly every Nephite blow brought death, but the Nephites only fell every once in a while because the more vital parts of their bodies were shielded by armor.   Now, I don’t know about you, but this gives me a peculiar-but-impressive idea of what a clash between Nephite and Lamanite looked like. They approach, they swing at each other, the Nephite sword connects once, and the Lamanite falls. This is different from our perhaps cinema-informed ideas of combat in which swords clash against each other, one attacking, another parrying, causing it to take time and effort to push through the opponents guard. 

If the Nephite can kill a Lamanite almost with every stroke, then the Lamanite swords aren’t stopping the Nephite swords.  And if the Lamanite swords aren’t stopping the attack, then the Lamanites are either incompetent at defense, or they are trying to do something different.  Perhaps making their own attack.

This suggests a different way of doing battle than we might be used to. Perhaps the Nephites did not parry or block their opponents’ weapons. Perhaps when they raised their swords, they avoided the Lamanite swords and went straight for the kill-strike at the same time that the Lamanites were trying to hit them back.  It may even be that they allowed the Lamanites to hit them and trusted the armor to protect them. While the Lamanites struck, they struck the Lamanites. Since the Lamanites had no armor, every blow was guaranteed to do damage.  (Swords in Mesoamerica consisted of many obsidian blades struck along both edges of a club. One swipe across the neck with one of those babies shreds open your enemy’s jugular vein and death comes quickly.)

This teaches us about the importance of putting on the armor of God. Otherwise, every temptation that hits us, we will give in, and that brings spiritual death.  The odd way the Nephites fought also says something about how to hit back at the temptations.  If temptations entice with a twisted combination of truth and lie, strike directly at the lie. Hit it hard with the truth you know. (And if you don’t know what the lie is, pray hard for revelation and power to resist and for discernment. The Spirit will eventually show you where the lie is.)