Come, Follow Me November 18-24: Ether 4-11
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.
Light and Void
By Steven L. Peck
Most of us know the story: The brother of Jared, concerned about crossing the ocean in waterproof—and, consequently, lightproof—ships, sought the Lord's help and, using his creativity, presented sixteen molten stones for the Lord to illuminate. I’ll come back to the brother of Jared and Jaredite history, but first, I want to talk about illumination. Light. Let’s talk about light theologically.[1]
And God said, "Let there be light.” And there was light. Let denotes an allowance, like an allowance to enter, in the sense of a door opening.
Let there be light. Let: A removal of a blockage. An opening from a shut door. More like a set of affordances that allow the shuffling of something from one place to another. God let light into the universe where it never existed before. Light was the first manifestation in the universe. Manifest even to God. For God saw the light and saw it was good.[1]
But that wasn’t his last word on light. The restoration gives us more. D&C 88 is a stunning discourse on the light. This section uses metaphors such as "the light of truth" and "the earth rolling on its wings," which can be difficult to interpret as they blend concepts like the Light of Christ with physical realities like photons.
But for this discourse, I'm focusing on the massless photon that captured Einstein's heart.
These verses seem to radiate genuine photons like the kind we shoot from lasers. D&C: 88:
11 And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings;
12 Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—
13 The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things.
The statement "Giveth life to all things" is scientifically relevant. Photosynthesis is the basis of all life on earth (save a couple of odd seamounts that use chemical rather than solar energy). But what is stranger is that photosynthesis is a quantum phenomenon. The leaf of a plant, it has been discovered, is flat-out a quantum computer so sophisticated that it reaches 100% efficiency in how the light creates the energies needed to create the sugars and proteins the plant will manufacture in making its structures.[2] Quantum mechanics is implicated everywhere, and the quantum foam of the universe really seems to fill the immensity of space.
That was a long preamble. So, now we move to our Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon lesson on the Book of Ether.
Light
In chapter 3, which we read last week, the brother of Jared has made some molten stones. There are a thousand lessons in this event about how the Lord works and how often it involves us using our hearts and minds to figure out a solution that involves both the Lord and our own efforts.
Jared says to the Lord, “Let there be light, please?”
4 And I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man; therefore touch these stones, O Lord, with thy finger, and prepare them that they may shine forth in darkness; and they shall shine forth unto us in the vessels which we have prepared, that we may have light while we shall cross the sea.
And the Lord assents, stretches forth his finger, and touches the stones one by one.
6 And it came to pass that when the brother of Jared had said these words, behold, the Lord stretched forth his hand and touched the stones one by one with his finger.
The Lord let the light into the stones, just as he once did the whole universe.
From here to chapter 11 is a story of the Jaredites’ sojourn in the new world. It is a brutal portrayal of alternating wickedness and righteousness. A few verses seem to capture the idea of light contrasted with the moral void that marks the state when light vanishes and things fall apart. In Figure 1, I tried to capture some of the feel of these chapters in the short selection of words and phrases like a poem drawing on textual fragments, but be careful. Seeing the world in dichotomous categories and shuffling people into them can be very dangerous, fraught with potential mistakes. Once we start dividing the world into us/them, righteous/wicked, sheep/wolves, we’ve lost the narrative. These extremes should be used only pedagogically (?), as we often see in the Book of Mormon, to identify poles and opposites. Tendencies and predilections. Real people are complex and should be treated as individuals and only reluctantly assigned to categories that they would not willingly recognize about themselves. The poles are real, but so are people.
Void
By this point, we’ve seen the Jaredites are subject to the same temptations and political battles with which we in the 21st century are so well acquainted. We see wars and rumors of war. Divisions. Hatred. Secret combinations to get gain. (I see the chaotic world of social media lurking on the sidelines of the Jaredite account.) Moroni, the editor of Ether, warns that these harms are the ones that have destroyed his people and nation. He then speaks to us in chapter 8:
20 And now I, Moroni, do not write the manner of their oaths and combinations, for it hath been made known unto me that they are had among all people, and they are had among the Lamanites.
21 And they have caused the destruction of this people of whom I am now speaking, and also the destruction of the people of Nephi.
22 And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations, to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold, they shall be destroyed; for the Lord will not suffer that the blood of his saints, which shall be shed by them, shall always cry unto him from the ground for vengeance upon them and yet he avenge them not.
So Moroni warns us. Do not listen to the voices that sow division. And hatred. That cast your fellow saints as evil because they disagree with your point of view. Who turn the world into US vs. THEM. Of such lies the path of destruction. Learn to follow the same light that Jared forged in sixteen stones that light our journey over the sea of trouble over which we all sail: the light of the Savior.
[1] From the Etz Hayim—“Light, the first thing God created, can be seen as symbolizing Judaism’s commitment to clarity rather than mystery, to openness rather than concealment, to study rather than blind faith. Light, God’s first creation, becomes a symbol of God’s presence” (5).
[2] “Moreover, certain macroscopic objects are sensitive to quantum phenomena, and most of these are living. We discovered in the last chapter how quantum tunneling inside enzymes can make a difference to whole cells. Here we have explored how the initial photon-capturing event responsible for putting most of the biomass on the planet appears to be dependent on a delicate quantum coherence that can be maintained for biologically relevant lengths of time within the warm but highly organized interior of a leaf or microbe. Once again, we see Schrödinger’s order from order capable of capturing quantum events, and what Jordan termed amplification of quantum phenomena into the macroscopic world. Life seems to bridge the quantum and classical worlds, perched on the quantum edge.
Bibliography
Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary. United States: Jewish Publication Society, 2001.
Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili. Life on the Edge: The Coming of the Age of Quantum Biology ( 132). Crown. Kindle Edition.
Images
Caleb Williams, And the Wind Did Never Cease to Blow, 2019. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/and-the-wind-did-never-cease-to-blow/].
Kendal Ray Johnson, Baby on Board. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/baby-on-board/].
Sarah Cannon, Conduit of Hope, 2023. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [Bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/conduit-of-hope/].