The Gulf of Ideologies

Come Follow Me (1 Nephi 11-15)

I love 1st Nephi chapter 8 - Lehi’s dream of the Tree of Life. There’s so much to study and dissect and ponder. And it would seem Heavenly Father thinks so too, because it’s one of the rare places in the Book of Mormon where not only do you get a retelling from another perspective, you get additional details and interpretation to help you with your pondering.

And God bless that Nephi, by the way. I love that when his father shares some powerful spiritual knowledge with his family, Nephi goes straight to the Lord and asks, “Can I know what my dad knows, the way my dad knows it?”

And because he’s serious - TRANSLATION: he means to do something with his newfound knowledge by way of obedience - the Lord generously responds. AND A HALF.

I’ve always been fascinated with the image of the great and spacious building in Lehi’s dream. Back in chapter 8, we learn that it sits in the air. TRANSLATION: It’s a building without a foundation.

We also learn that peer pressure isn’t a modern phenomenon. Some of the people who find their way to the tree are influenced by the mocking of those in the building, an activity which Neal A. Maxwell wryly notes is the chief preoccupation of those who reside there (Neal A. Maxwell, "`Becometh as a Child,'" Ensign May 1996).

People hate to be mocked, so mocking serves very effectively as a worldly tool for compliance. Satan uses shallow vanity to create peer pressure - with images and lifestyles of sophistication and glamor.

I dare say peer pressure is at the heart of political correctness: create a culture that is desirable and sought after by the standards of the world, and brand anyone as outcasts who doesn’t have the correct attitudes, values, beliefs, possessions, titles, or education.

That would become the first step of sifting into forced compliance: first create this culture which mocks any who don’t clamor after it themselves, and eventually punish those who don’t clamor after it.

Mocking is the opposite of charity. And if charity is the pure love of Jesus Christ, the math seems to work out that mocking is an anti-Christ activity.

All this is simply prelude to a big AHA that hit me one day while reading 1 Nephi 12:18 - where the angel interprets an image from the dream I’d never caught before:

“And the large and spacious building, which thy father saw, is vain imaginations and the pride of the children of men. And a great and a terrible gulf divideth them; yea, even the word of the justice of the Eternal God, and the Messiah…”

How did I miss that the gulf separating those at the tree and those in the building was an image to be interpreted? “Even the word of the justice of [God].”

What is the justice of God? The principle that we will be judged. We will make an accounting to our Father and Creator for our actions in this life. That’s the ideology of the believer: my behavior must be accounted for.

The ideology of the unbeliever: you answer to no one for your actions. Satan has gone to more work to obfuscate the eternal truth of accountability than possibly any other of the implacable laws of the universe.

That’s the gulf. A gulf of ideologies. The gulf in the dream represents the gulf of ideologies between the world’s view of life and the actual reality of it. The reality: you will account for your choices. The illusion: you are free to do whatever you want. Satan has even wrested the term free agency by injecting the lie that our choices aren’t affixed to inevitable consequences.

There has been propaganda since the first sin recorded in scripture over this concept. What did Cain say after he killed Abel? “I am free” (Moses 5:33). Satan had convinced him he was free to do what he wanted. He just left the fine print out or put it in a teeny tiny font: However - you are not free of the consequences.

Cause and effect is a natural law. God must administer these unbending laws of the universe, or as Alma taught, He would “cease to be God” (Alma 42:13).

But Father paid an incredibly high price to honor our agency: the life and blood of His only perfectly obedient Son - the Lamb without spot. He will not force us to follow these laws of the universe. He will only invite. Well. And also plead. But He is very clear in His warnings about consequences. He must administer them.

Hence - He sent His Son.

Especially for the people in the building.