Come, Follow Me November 25-December 1: Ether 12-15
In 2024, the Maxwell Institute will offer a weekly series of short essays on the Book of Mormon, in support of the Church-wide Come, Follow Me study curriculum. Each week, the Maxwell Institute blog will feature a post by a member of the Institute faculty exploring an aspect of the week’s reading block. We hope these explorations will enrich your study and teaching of the Book of Mormon throughout the coming year.
Peacemakers and Pride
By J.B. Haws
I can never come anymore to the last chapters of Ether without thinking of what still stands out in my mind as a wonderfully unexpected Ensign article from the February 2008 issue. I think what made it so unexpected was that it drew life lessons from the final battle of Shiz and Coriantumr—an episode that doesn’t typically inspire a lot of personal application-type meditations. But Dale Smith’s “A Battle of Pride” took the Ether 15 story in just that direction.
The whole article is worth a re-read, but the gist of the story is this: Dale Smith had started a computer company that was enjoying a lot of success until a competitor leveled a patent infringement lawsuit against Smith’s company. The lawsuit seemed frivolous and unwarranted, but the drawn-out legal battle to fight the charges drained so many of Smith’s company’s resources that he was facing the real possibility of bankruptcy. In desperate need of clarity and direction, Smith went to the temple fasting—and as he waited in the temple’s chapel, he grabbed a copy of the Book of Mormon and let it fall open. It opened on Ether 15. And all he could see was himself in the story of Coriantumr and Shiz—a tragic death spiral that was fueled by pride and personal grievances. “I had wondered why the gruesome battles between Coriantumr and Shiz were included in the scriptures,” he wrote. “Now I understood that, among other things, this story could teach me important lessons about conflict and priorities. Through them, I realized that my own pride was clouding my ability to weigh the costs of fighting this legal battle. I learned that sometimes settling a conflict can be more important than winning it.”
That was the answer he needed. “Through the influence of the Holy Spirit and my experience with the scriptures that day,” he wrote, “I was able to learn the principles of conflict resolution that applied to my specific problem.” Smith put these principles into action and settled the lawsuit. “The settlement was expensive and required us to work around our competitor’s broad claims; however, by putting it behind us, we were able to get back to business, and the company once again entered a period of profit and growth. My biggest regret was that I had not been ready to receive this answer sooner.”
I’m struck with the simple power of Smith’s statement: “sometimes settling a conflict can be more important than winning it.” That line rings out with the force of truth. But it’s also the kind of line that likely leaves a lot of us protesting with a “yes, but . . .” reaction. Okay, we say, but what about the injustice of the lawsuit? What about standing up for the principle of the thing? What about taking a noble stand for the right to prevail, come what may?
The thing that strikes me in Dale Smith’s story was that he was open to an answer that he didn’t expect and likely didn’t want—but he could put that all aside and listen, really listen, when heavenly nudges came. As much as anything, that openness to redirecting—to repenting—seems to be the very thing that was missing in the downfall of Coriantumr’s people.
Ether’s warning to Coriantumr and his people that “they should be destroyed” if they did not repent must have struck Coriantumr as so misguided and implausible as to be infuriating—and even treasonous. We read in Ether 13:22 that “they sought to kill Ether” after he delivered his warning. Why such a violent reaction? Was it that Coriantumr felt so embattled on every side (see Ether 13:15, or Ether 13:18, for example) that this seemed like yet another attempt to undermine his rule or embolden his enemies? Is there a possibility that Coriantumr saw Ether as a rival claimant to the throne since Ether was the grandson of a king who had been overthrown (see Ether 11:18-23)? Could part of this have been that Coriantumr felt it his right to defend his position with violence because he was the one under attack, not the other way around (see Ether 13:15)? Could he have felt justified because, in his mind, he was not the aggressor, such that he rejected suggestions that he needed to repent?
Hard to say, since many of the background details of this story aren’t included in the narrative. At the very least, though, the tragic irony is that Ether’s message pointed out a path to the very outcome that it seemed Coriantumr most desired, that “the Lord would give unto him his kingdom and spare his people.” All of that could happen if only Coriantumr “would repent, and all his household” (Ether 13:20). For whatever reason, it was a message that Coriantumr and his people refused to hear—and the end was as horrific as Ether prophesied it would be. It is impossible to read Coriantumr’s late changes of heart and his pleas to Shiz for some kind of armistice without feeling the profound tragedy of this—and the sobering reality that this all could have been different.
Whatever Coriantumr’s thinking—however indignant he felt at the suggestion that he needed to repent, or however justified he felt in the rightness of his cause—what seems inescapable is that when he could have chosen humility, meekness, softening, instead pride and stubbornness and hardening proved to be the downfall of a whole people.
And so we come back to Dale Smith’s flash of insight in the temple that day: “I learned that sometimes settling a conflict can be more important than winning it.” That line resonates with the oft-repeated truism that pride cares more about who is right than what is right. And that line resonates with the words of prophets who are doing for us today what Ether tried to do for Coriantumr: marking out choices and consequences that really do pivot on pride and humility.
From President Benson’s April 1989 General Conference talk, “Beware of Pride”: “Think of what pride has cost us in the past and what it is now costing us in our own lives, our families, and the Church. Think of the repentance that could take place with lives changed, marriages preserved, and homes strengthened, if pride did not keep us from confessing our sins and forsaking them.”
From President Nelson’s “Peacemakers Needed” talk from the April 2023 General Conference: “Contention never leads to inspired solutions. . . . Make no mistake about it: contention is evil! . . . Contention drives away the Spirit—every time. Contention reinforces the false notion that confrontation is the way to resolve differences, but it never is. Contention is a choice. Peacemaking is a choice.”
It's interesting to think about Ether’s position in all of this—interesting to wonder what life must have been like for him, the grandson of a deposed ruler and the son of a father “who dwelt in captivity all his days” (Ether 11:19). Surely Ether must have been confronted with a family’s legacy of injuries and injustices and affronts. How did this affect him? Was he faced with overcoming bitterness and desires for revenge? Did he see all around him the soul wounds that pride could inflict? If so, all of that suggests that he likely brought a special kind of lived authority to the very message he was delivering to Coriantumr.
And it’s interesting that in the middle of this narrative, Moroni interjects unforgettable reflections about humility and charity, weakness and sufficient grace—what we now have as Ether chapter 12. The story that he narrates on either side of this interlude shows why those things really matter.
President Nelson made those same kinds of connections in his talk, “Peacemakers Needed”: “Charity is the antidote to contention. Charity is the spiritual gift that helps us to cast off the natural man, who is selfish, defensive, prideful, and jealous. Charity is the principal characteristic of a true follower of Jesus Christ. Charity defines a peacemaker. When we humble ourselves before God and pray with all the energy of our hearts, God will grant us charity. . . . Now, I am not talking about ‘peace at any price.’ I am talking about treating others in ways that are consistent with keeping the covenant you make when you partake of the sacrament. You covenant to always remember the Savior. In situations that are highly charged and filled with contention, I invite you to remember Jesus Christ. Pray to have the courage and wisdom to say or do what He would. As we follow the Prince of Peace, we will become His peacemakers.”
Our Maxwell Institute colleague, Rosalynde Welch, wrote this line in her book Ether: A Brief Theological Introduction: “Ultimately, scripture aims to act on its readers with an existential and spiritual force that no other kind of writing claims. For scripture to succeed in this aim, readers must encounter the sacred text as a living agent that can surprise them, challenge them, and speak directly to the experiential stakes of their life.”[1] These chapters at the end of Ether do that. Dale Smith was right—in ways that can surprise us and challenge us, the story of Coriantumr and Shiz really does have something to say to us today.
[1] Rosalynde Frandsen Welch, Ether: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, Utah: Neal A. Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University, 2020), 68.
Images
Jorge Cocco Santángelo, Coriantumr, The Last Jaredite, 2017. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/coriantumr-the-last-jaredite/].
Gary Ernest Smith, Ether Hiding in the Cavity of a Rock. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/ether-hiding-in-the-cavity-of-a-rock/].
Harold Copping, Christ Washing The Feet Of The Disciples, 1959. Nice Art Gallery, [niceartgallery.com/Harold-Copping/Christ-Washing-The-Feet-Of-The-Disciples-oil-painting.html]