John Bytheway: 00:00 Welcome to part two with Dr. Doug Benson, the Book of Ether chapters 12 through 16.

Dr. Doug Benson: 00:07 Moroni then comes down in verse 28. Leading up to weakness, he’s talking about faith and hope, and he gives all these examples of people and how they have exercised faith. This is behavior. People do things, and because they have done things, they are blessed, things come to them. And they probably aren’t blessed in ways they thought they would be blessed. So, Moroni gives us all these examples of how having hope and faith can help us to put off the natural man, and also accept the natural man, that we have weaknesses.

  00:44 But then he goes back to that. He starts coming back out of this chiasm where he starts to talk about faith and hope again, but he adds charity. Charity is an interesting attribute, because it’s the attribute that is both necessary for and the result of. We have hope and faith and charity, which increases our hope and faith and our charity. And without charity, we are nothing. When we talk about weakness, part of putting that off is moving beyond our behavior, and seeking something that we don’t have. We talk about charity as the pure love of Christ. As Moroni says later, I can’t have the pure love of Christ on my own. I’m going to suffer here. Everyone is. We’re weak. We just learned that in verse 27. We’re all imperfect and we’re all going to suffer here.

  01:45 We’re also all going to feel joy if we are having faith in Christ, and hope, and then there’s charity. I can’t have the pure love of Christ, because I won’t suffer everything. I can feel pain for other people, I can have empathy, but I think charity is different. Charity is a gift of the Spirit that we have to seek out, and almost apply for. In Moroni, he talks about how do you get charity? You pray for charity, because that’s where grace comes in. That will be charity not only for other people, but charity for ourselves.

  02:23 In this context, when we’re talking about Moroni, it’s charity for himself. He’s like, “I can’t do this. I can’t write. Nobody’s going to know what that means.” The Lord isn’t telling him just to have charity for the Gentiles, you need to have charity for yourself. “You have weakness. I gave you this weakness on purpose, so that you could be humble. By being humble, then you can access my grace.” Which then now we’re back into this iterative cycle that Elder Renlund talks about. Faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost. We have hope, we have faith, which is a behavior, and I would suggest repentance is faithful behavior, it’s changing in the direction that would get us closer to God. That helps us to overcome weakness. It makes weak things stronger, because we’ve increased just maybe that much.

Hank Smith: 03:22 I really like this. I’ve never seen that in this chapter before, where the centerpiece is Moroni struggling with his own lack of ability. He is abridging the book of Ether here, and maybe he comes to this, “Oh, this is really going to help me overcome what I’m struggling with.” I think everything we’ve talked about today is so relevant. Elder Uchtdorf said “it may seem odd to think of having a relationship with ourselves, but we do. Some people can’t get along with themselves.” Makes me laugh a little bit. “They criticize and belittle themselves all day long until they begin to hate themselves. You are endlessly compassionate and patient with the weaknesses of others. Please remember also to be compassionate and patient with yourself.” That’s what the Lord does. He allows me to be… My grace is sufficient. You can love yourself with the weakness that you have.

Dr. Doug Benson: 04:25 Yeah. Nobody knows my weakness better than the Savior. Going back to Alma 7:11-12, He has suffered everything. He knows me better than I know myself. If I’m praying for charity for myself, who is going to be able to give me that gift more appropriately than the Savior? Because He has suffered everything that I have suffered, and knows exactly how I feel. He’s the only one who knows that, and the only one that can except for the people who pray for charity, and that’s where He goes to. “What are the Gentiles?” He says. “You don’t need to worry about the Gentiles. You can pray for the Gentiles, that they might have charity, or pray that you would have charity for the Gentiles.”

John Bytheway: 05:14 Yeah, I was just looking at verse 36. “I prayed unto the Lord that He would give unto the Gentiles grace that they might have charity.” I see a real human side of Moroni here at the end of verse 25. “I fear lest the Gentiles shall mock at our words.” He’s thinking of people reading this book, what, a millennia later?

Hank Smith: 05:34 Yeah, yeah.

John Bytheway: 05:35 He’s not even going to be here, but he feels the weight of his assignment so heavily that what if they mock our words? Mockers mock, that’s what they do. We’ll always have that, which is, to the next verse, “Fools mock, but they shall mourn. My grace is sufficient for the meek. They’ll take no advantage because of your weakness.”

Hank Smith: 05:57 Yeah, look at that. “I fear” that the Gentiles are going to mock these things. Then you go over to verse 36. I’m praying, please give the Gentiles grace.

John Bytheway: 06:08 “That they might have charity.” Yeah.

Hank Smith: 06:10 Yeah. The Lord is interesting in His response. “That doesn’t matter. You love yourself, right? Doesn’t it feel that way?”

Dr. Doug Benson: 06:18 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 06:19 You got to not worry about them. And later on, doesn’t Mormon quote his father writing to him? “Nevertheless, notwithstanding their weakness, let us remain faithful.” Stop focusing on what they’re doing, maybe?

Hank Smith: 06:35 John, I love that. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this chapter this way, that Moroni is becoming quite vulnerable.

John Bytheway: 06:43 Yeah. And I’ve wondered if it’s, “This was my dad’s life’s work. This wasn’t my life’s work. All of a sudden, now it’s in my lap, I’m worried I’m going to do it right.” Maybe that’s what’s happening there?

Dr. Doug Benson: 06:55 And he’s also alone.

John Bytheway: 06:57 Yeah. Which doesn’t help.

Dr. Doug Benson: 06:59 Yeah. That’s where we go back to this idea of where he identifies with Ether, because Ether is living in a cave.

John Bytheway: 07:07 That’s true.

Dr. Doug Benson: 07:08 He’s trying to teach us a thousand years, or however long, to have faith and charity with ourselves, have faith and hope. Even though we have weakness, really, it’s the Lord is teaching him the same principle, because he’s alone. He’s like, “I’m despondent about this thing, my work. Is this going to be something that’s effective or helpful for people in the future? Or are they just going to make fun of it?” And the Lord uses that example to teach us these principles.

Hank Smith: 07:42 I really like that the Lord doesn’t say, “Oh, they’ll love it.” Doesn’t say that.

Dr. Doug Benson: 07:48 Exactly. Yeah.

John Bytheway: 07:49 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 07:49 He says, “That doesn’t really matter, does it?”

John Bytheway: 07:53 Yeah.

Dr. Doug Benson: 07:53 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 07:55 Before you read verse 30, had you ever heard of Mount Zerin?

Dr. Doug Benson: 08:00 I had not.

John Bytheway: 08:02 You know why? It was removed.

Dr. Doug Benson: 08:09 Oh, that is perfect.

John Bytheway: 08:11 So I guess the brother Jared did remove it.

Dr. Doug Benson: 08:13 Yeah, he must have.

Hank Smith: 08:15 I’m interested in how Moroni finishes this chapter. He says, “I’ve only written a few of these things because of my weakness in writing.” He brings it up again.

John Bytheway: 08:26 There it is again.

Hank Smith: 08:27 We get it, yeah.

Dr. Doug Benson: 08:28 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 08:28 “And now I would commend you to seek this Jesus.” That’s behavior. You said every one that he listed did something. It wasn’t like the force of Star Wars, they didn’t just have faith, they acted in faith. Is that the same invitation here? Do something.

Dr. Doug Benson: 08:46 It’s a very shorthand way to say all the verses there where I just talked about stuff, do that. Look for the seed, what is your hope in? Act on faith, and through the grace of Christ, your weakness will be made strong. Before we move on, I’ve been talking about this idea of dialectics. It’s very similar to the doctrine of opposition, the idea of opposition in all things, to act or be acted upon. When we talk about opposition in all things, we are focused on maybe opposition between things, good and bad. True, not true. Reality, not reality. Sometimes I see things more about opposition within things. That’s this idea that we are natural men and we are spiritual people. Sadness and joy can coexist. Anger and love can coexist. There’s opposition in those things, but there is opposition within, meaning that we don’t necessarily want to get rid of either one of those. They can both coexist. Don’t eat the fruit, multiply and replenish the Earth. Justice and mercy. You’re saved by grace after all you can do.

  10:06 There’s this idea, or this opposition, that is within things, rather than just between things. Opposition between things requires discernment, being able to discern between truth and error, while opposition within things requires us to maybe see the necessity and benefits that exist in both sides of that. You’ve had to choose between good things, two good things. One with maybe a greater long-term purpose. Living in the garden is not a bad thing. Moving forward is also not a bad thing. It lends itself back to that idea of weakness. Not a bad thing, but there’s an opposition in it.

Hank Smith: 10:53 Sometimes we spend a lot of time and energy fighting something that’s not terrible.

Dr. Doug Benson: 10:59 Yeah. We need to find the truth in the thing.

Hank Smith: 11:02 Yeah, find the truth of it. I really like that, because then I can actually deal with something I’ve accepted. We can’t deal with something I haven’t accepted is true.

Dr. Doug Benson: 11:14 If I look at verse 27 with opposition between things, weakness needs to be resolved. I have to get rid of weakness, because weakness is bad. But opposition within is I can accept my weakness and recognize that I need to act in faith and move forward to change what I can.

Hank Smith: 11:38 Is this like sending a child on a mission? You just did that. I’m both sad and happy.

Dr. Doug Benson: 11:43 Yeah, definitely. Elder Uchtdorf, in his most recent conference talk, talked about being sad and having joy at the same time. I miss my daughter, oof, and I wouldn’t want her to be anywhere else right now. Opposition within.

John Bytheway: 12:00 Hank, you’ve heard me use the phrase “a sermon in a sentence”, and here’s one in verse 32: “man must hope”. That’s something to mark. Hope rests in Christ. All the things I hope for, the most important things, all are possible because of Christ, so I like that.

Hank Smith: 12:17 “Man must hope” “a more excellent hope”. I love it. Doug, we’ve had you for a while now, and we’ve spent a lot of it on… Well, we spent almost the entire time on Ether 12. Which deserves it, by the way, Ether 12 is a standout chapter in the Book of Mormon. But you have alluded to what we’re going to talk about in these last three chapters. You’ve talked to us about emotions, and it seems that, in these last three chapters, there is no check on emotions. They don’t check the facts, they just act, especially in anger. With the lens that you have from your experience, how did you see these last three chapters?

Dr. Doug Benson: 13:01 Most of their behavior and what they do seems to be driven by intense emotion; anger, fear, shame, guilt. And there’s very little checking in with what they know from Ether.

John Bytheway: 13:17 It sounds like they’re just downright insane for the rest of the whole book.

Dr. Doug Benson: 13:22 You look at these people acting on the intensity of their emotion. Anger is a fact to them, vengeance is a fact. You kill one person, and then we need to have an entire war based on the death of my brother, and then we need to have an entire war because I envy something you have. I don’t have this, I need it, or I want it, so we’re going to have a big war. Secret combinations throw in, that’s all about pride. The emotion of envy, the emotion of contempt or disgust for other people are driving these people’s behavior.

  13:59 They have opportunities to change their behavior, but instead they build up their army. Coriantumr gets wounded, he has two years to think about it, and what does he do? He probably sits and ruminates on the thing that makes him angry, why he’s justified in his behavior, and why he should be doing what he’s doing, why this war makes sense, and then he acts on it. You end up in this state because they do not put off the natural man. There’s no check.

Hank Smith: 14:28 This is what happens. The emotions keep escalating on both sides.

Dr. Doug Benson: 14:34 Becoming one is his doctrine, he goes on to say in 3 Nephi. And if you look in Ether 14, Moroni says they were divided. Part of them fled to the army of Shiz, and part of them fled to the army of Coriantumr. A very stark black and white division in that way is not the doctrine of Christ.

Hank Smith: 15:02 You generalize. It’s an easy way to put someone in a category.

Dr. Doug Benson: 15:04 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 15:05 “I don’t have to think anymore, once I put you over there.”

Dr. Doug Benson: 15:08 If you go back to when he talks about there is opposition in all things, he says that if there wasn’t, then we wouldn’t be able to compound them into one. I would suggest that’s an idea of opposition within. If you can’t recognize these two opposing things, you can’t bring them together. Work together, not be divided, not judge each other, not act on anger. That’s what contention is, it’s acting on the emotion of anger.

Hank Smith: 15:36 Yeah, so it’s not terrible to feel angry.

Dr. Doug Benson: 15:39 It’s not wrong, I would say. It’s weakness, but sometimes we need it. The example I often give, anger has motivated some of the most helpful change in the world, right? Like I said earlier, within this scripture it talks about they were acting on their anger of 14:25. “Thus we see that the Lord did visit them in the fullness of His wrath, and the wickedness and the abominations had prepared a way for their everlasting destruction.” That’s interesting, too. “Their wickedness and their abomination had prepared a way for their everlasting destruction.” It doesn’t say, “And then the Lord destroyed them.”

Hank Smith: 16:23 Their acting on anger, yeah, destroyed themselves.

Dr. Doug Benson: 16:26 Even earlier in this chapter, he talks about there was a great curse upon all the land, and he says, “Because of their iniquity, if a man should lay down his tools, or his sword upon his shelf or upon the place whither he would keep it, behold: on the morrow, he could not find it, so great was the curse upon the land.” It doesn’t say that God cursed the land. What it says is the natural consequences of, I’m going to say it as a psychologist, right? The natural consequences of acting on anger, or acting on any emotion ineffectively, are this. If I just let envy and anger and all that run wild, people are going to try to steal all my stuff all the time. The only way I’m going to be able to keep it is to just sleep on it.

Hank Smith: 17:14 It says in 15:19, “the Spirit of the Lord ceased striving with them. Satan had full power over their hearts. They were given up to hardness, blindness. They’re going to be destroyed.” Even verse 22 is quite an interesting verse. They were drunk with anger, “even as a man who is drunk with wine”.

John Bytheway: 17:36 When I’ve taught this, Hank, I’ve asked my class, describe someone who’s drunk. They don’t have situational awareness. They don’t know where they are. They don’t make good decisions. Like you were saying, this is nonsense. Why would they behave this way? You go down to verse 23, the armies have a count of 52 left on one side and 69 on the other. Don’t you think, at that point, you’d say, “There’s a lot of land here. Why don’t you guys go that way and we’ll go this way?” But they sleep on their swords, it doesn’t make any sense. And then at the end of verse 25, now there’s 32 of them and 27 of us. Don’t you think at that point you’d say, “Let’s go!”

Dr. Doug Benson: 18:14 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 18:16 But “the Spirit of the Lord ceased striving with them.” They’re drunk with anger. We read it and we think, “This doesn’t make any sense. Did people really get that far gone?”

Dr. Doug Benson: 18:25 Way to think about it is if we go back to the natural man aspect, emotions are hardwired, and we’ve talked about the urges that come with emotion. Here we’re back at opposition within. I don’t want to freeze in front of the car with headlights, but my brain takes over at certain points. The way I think about it is if I’m hiking in the woods and a bear jumps out, I don’t want to have to sit and think about, “What would be the best thing to do right now?” I could do a pros and cons on to run or not to run; by then, I’m a snack.

John Bytheway: 19:02 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 19:04 So, it’s a good thing that I have-

Dr. Doug Benson: 19:05 Yeah. Our brain is built to shut off our cognitive functioning, like our executive functioning part of our brain, to keep us alive, and I would suggest that in this case, this people may have just shut it off. Their anger was so intense. That’s maybe a natural consequence of letting your emotions run you, is that you have a harder time thinking, making different decisions, acting on faith.

John Bytheway: 19:37 Speaking of Mr. Spock, this is illogical, right? You called it cognitive function. They’re going, “It was overcome by anger.” I love the way you said that, was, “Wait, what would be the best thing to do right now?” Nobody was asking that question.

Dr. Doug Benson: 19:55 Nobody was. They were all drunk on their anger. They were no longer Spock. Or not even close to Spock, they moved all the way over to Bones. “You cold-blooded green-“

John Bytheway: 20:05 “Darn it, Jim, I’m not a warrior.”

Hank Smith: 20:06 Yeah.

Dr. Doug Benson: 20:06 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 20:08 Doug, let me ask you a quick question before I keep going into these chapters. I’ve heard you teach a principle you call wise mind. I would love our audience to hear that.

Dr. Doug Benson: 20:17 John brought up Spock, so here we go. But this idea of opposition within our dialectics, is this idea that we can have these two opposing things that coexist. One of those is our emotion mind, where we get stuck in our emotion, and if they run us, we have a really good example of what that looks like. We’re impulsive, we’re hot, we don’t care about logic, we just kind of move out of that. But if we’re all the way over on the other side of that, and we’re in our reasonable mind, Spock was never a happy guy, because he was too logical, right?

Hank Smith: 20:54 Yeah.

Dr. Doug Benson: 20:55 All that mattered to him was the facts. All that matters in this reasonable mind is what’s logical, which leaves out a lot of stuff. Charity is not a logical thing. Sometimes love is not logical. A wise mind is this synthesis of those two things. It’s being able to see the benefit within our emotion, and the benefit within our logic or reasonable side, and synthesizing those in a way to move forward effectively. So, it might be saying, “Hey, he killed my brother, and that makes me really sad, and I wish he wouldn’t have. And I’m also pretty angry. It makes me want to just go to war with him, but I don’t think I’m going to go to war, because then all these other people would die, including my brother, so instead I might do something wise mind, which is middle ground, and say, ‘Hey, I don’t like that. We’re going to go this way, you go that way.'” Kind of like John was saying, kind of the Kirk thing.

Hank Smith: 21:51 Yeah, that’s interesting. I’ve heard you talk about that before, that Star Trek, for anyone out there who was born in the 1900s, who knows what this is, has those three characters that represent those three.

Dr. Doug Benson: 22:04 Yeah. You’ve got your Spock as your reasonable mind, you’ve got your Bones as your emotion mind, and then Kirk tries to bring those guys together. He takes what they’re both saying, and put them in something, a package we can all listen to. The younger people that are listening, you might be thinking about Hermione is the reasonable mind in Harry Potter, and Ron is the emotion mind, and Harry would be the wise mind trying to put it all together. It’s a concept that goes back through time. Yin and yang, opposition.

Hank Smith: 22:35 I really like that, because that’s something I can use in my life. Sometimes I’m too emotional, and end up getting into trouble, and sometimes I’m too logical, I’m not thinking about anybody’s feelings, just facts, where I like the idea of balance and blend, and let there be tension between the two. Don’t let one take over.

Dr. Doug Benson: 22:55 Yeah. And when we talk about it, we’ll talk about wise mind as this innate thing that everybody has. It’s this innate wisdom we all have. We’re talking about, maybe, the light of Christ. The ability that we have to make wise decisions, they exist there, we have that power. And in the case of these people that we’re reading about, they have let their emotions and the things that are happening around them drown it out.

Hank Smith: 23:24 They let one side take over, this emotion mind. If you feel it, act on it. So, Doug, one of the reasons I invited you on when I read these chapters, I feel bad that I read these chapters and thought of you.

Dr. Doug Benson: 23:41 Wait a minute.

Hank Smith: 23:42 Yeah. You help people deal with anger, or manage it. Not, like you said, get rid of it, because it can be a helpful emotion. Walk us through what you do with patients who are struggling with acting on anger, because I know anger has destroyed marriages, anger has destroyed parent-child relationships, work relationships. Pretend you have a lot of clients in front of you right now.

Dr. Doug Benson: 24:15 Yeah, I need another four hours. I’m just kidding. A lot of it would be looking at some of the things we’ve talked about already. So, if we go to this idea that emotions can shut us down, or can shut down the pathway from our reasonable thinking to our emotional thinking and take over, sometimes you just need to do something that will bring down the emotion, so that you can think straight.

  24:43 John said being drunk with anger, you can’t be undrunk because you decide to be undrunk; you got to wait for it to kind of wear off. You can’t be like, “Oh wow, I’m really drunk. I should probably drive home though, so I’m not going to be drunk anymore.” Doesn’t work that way. They were drunk on anger. They couldn’t not be drunk anymore. They would have to do something to bring the anger down, reduce the anger. I talked earlier about taking a timeout, or you can do some deep breathing that might calm you down a little.

John Bytheway: 25:16 Do a service project or something.

Dr. Doug Benson: 25:18 Do some type of service project, do something nice for someone, because that’s the opposite of being angry, is doing something nice or being charitable. Then you can put yourself in a place to check the facts, and say, “Okay, does this anger make sense?” If it doesn’t, “Oh, what do I want to do? Oh, I want to have two warring nations. No, not effective.”

John Bytheway: 25:41 Not a great idea.

Dr. Doug Benson: 25:42 Yeah, let’s do the opposite of that. Or, “I’m going to post this thing on Facebook or Instagram,” or whatever your flavor of social media is. “Oh wait, what’s that going to do? Is that going to lead to division? Does this fit the facts? No, it doesn’t, so I’m going to act opposite. I’m going to do something different. I’m going to be a peacemaker.” President Nelson defines specifically how to be a peacemaker, which would be opposite action for anger.

Hank Smith: 26:10 And I can see why you would say bring your anger down before you ask those questions, because if I’m really angry and someone says, “Does it fit the facts?” I’m going to say, “Yeah!”

Dr. Doug Benson: 26:17 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 26:22 Yeah, it does.

Dr. Doug Benson: 26:23 Coriantumr says, “Yeah, let’s get them.”

Hank Smith: 26:24 Where you’re saying, let it wear off for a second before you start asking these questions. It reminds me of something our team member, the great Lisa Spice, sent me once. She said you need that gentle reminder that one time in the Bible, Elijah was so mad he said, “Lord, I want to die.” So, God said, “Here’s some food. Why don’t you have a nap?” So, Elijah slept, ate, woke up, and decided things weren’t so bad. Never underestimate the spiritual power of a nap and a snack. I’m sorry what I said when I was hangry.

Dr. Doug Benson: 27:01 Right. You were asking where do you go with that? That would be how you might act opposite, but you might need to solve a problem that’s causing this anger. In these chapters, there’s some things that you know it would make sense why people are angry. Someone killed my brother, someone stole all my stuff. It might be that you would think about effective ways to solve that. In our day, if someone came and stole all the stuff out of my house, I’m not going to track them down, I’m not going to go to their house and find them and take all their stuff back, I’m just going to call the police. It seems like a more effective, safe way to do that. It’s problem solving, it’s not acting on my emotion. If I get in a fender bender, I’m not going to get out and match the damage to the other person’s car that happened to my car. That doesn’t make any sense.

Hank Smith: 27:47 “Yeah, that’ll show you.”

Dr. Doug Benson: 27:50 The third thing that you might look at doing is we go back to this idea of radical acceptance. Sometimes, anger and bitterness and such continue because we’re not willing to accept things as they are. If you look in Ether 15:16, “And it came to pass that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps; and after they had retired to their camps they took up howling and lamentations for the loss of the slain of their people.” There’s this sadness that pervades, right? “And so great were their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that they did rend the air exceedingly. And then it came to pass on the morrow that they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was the day.” This is this idea of accepting reality. Maybe the intense emotion that you’re experiencing is because of what’s going on.

  28:44 Oftentimes, we talk about this idea of accepting reality as a necessity to changing reality. If you don’t accept that this sadness is a result of these constant wars, you’re not willing to do something different. The next day, on the morrow, you’ll get up and you’ll just go to battle, because that’s what we do. And then at the night, when you go back to bed, you’ll cry and you’ll be like, “Why is it like this? Why?” And then the next day, you’ll do it over again.

  29:15 We’ve talked about checking the facts, and then deciding whether you need to act opposite to that emotion or problem solve it. Then sometimes, those might not work, and you just have to accept the reality of what is happening. Maybe that’s why I’m having this emotion. That’s the piece of information. I’m being given signals that I don’t like this, and if I don’t accept the reality of where I am… In Coriantumr’s place, he starts to do that in the beginning of chapter 15.

Hank Smith: 29:47 He’s starting to see.

Dr. Doug Benson: 29:49 Yeah. It’s interesting too, because my son, Porter, we were talking about this, because thinking these things over. And he was like, “Yeah, and he repented.” And I was like, “Well…” We had a little conversation about this, and so I had to reread some of this again and rethink about this. Did he actually repent? I think the emotion of guilt worked on him. He noticed. He gained awareness of his reality. He came to himself as another. He awoke and he rose from the dust, is another way to say that. That suddenly, “Oh, wait, look at all these people that are dead, two million of our mighty men, and also their wives and their children.” He starts talking like he’s having a Zeezrom experience. He was mourning and he couldn’t be comforted. He’s like, “Okay, I can repent of this. I can actually change my behavior.”

  30:41 And he writes a letter to Shiz to try to solve his problem. Shiz says, “Sure, just let me cut your head off. I’ll spare everybody.” It’s almost as if what Ether said, his prophecy, would be granted. Kingdom will be back. I think if he would’ve repented earlier, when he was told to repent, it would’ve been better, but still, all the people would’ve been spared if he would’ve sacrificed himself. And in comes the emotion of fear. And that’s maybe an assumption, because he doesn’t necessarily say that, but the behavior he engages in is right in line with urges for fear: run away. I don’t know if I would say he fully repents. He comes to himself.

Hank Smith: 31:25 He starts to, yeah.

Dr. Doug Benson: 31:26 He has an awareness, but he doesn’t accept the consequences that might come with repentance.

Hank Smith: 31:34 Oh, interesting.

Dr. Doug Benson: 31:36 You may even think about it like he fears the short term versus the long term. Even in this case, if Shiz kills him, and he’s repented, what’s the long-term outcome? He’s saved in the kingdom of God because he’s repented, or at least he’ll receive more mercy in that case. I don’t know. I’m not a judge, can’t say. But instead he’s like, “I don’t want to die. I would rather wake up and cry, and-“

Hank Smith: 32:01 Go to battle again.

Dr. Doug Benson: 32:03 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 32:04 It’s interesting, Doug, that I’ve met people like that, where most of their relationships are adversarial. There’s no stopping and going, “Wait, what’s going on here? How can I address this problem?” And just keep doing it every day. And, “I’m ruining all my relationships, left and right, and yet I won’t stop and say, ‘I need some help.'” I wanted to share a story, it’s a very, very sad story, from President Monson, and then maybe have you comment on how we can save relationships, because that’s part of what you do. This is President Monson, October 2009.

  32:43 “Many years ago, a young couple called my office and asked if they could come in for counseling. They indicated they had suffered a tragedy in their lives and that their marriage was in serious jeopardy. The tension between them was apparent as they entered my office. Their story unfolded slowly at first as the husband spoke haltingly, and his wife cried quietly. The young man had returned from serving a mission, was accepted at a prestigious university. In the university ward, he met his future wife. She was also a student at the university. After a year of dating, they journeyed to Utah and were married in the Temple, returning east shortly after finishing their school. By the time they graduated and returned to their home state, they were expecting their first child, and the husband had employment in his chosen field. The wife gave birth to a baby boy. Life was good.”

  33:37 “When their son was about 18 months old, they decided to take a short vacation to visit family members who lived a few hundred miles away. This was at a time when car seats for children and seat belts for adults were scarcely heard of, let alone used. The three members of the family all rode in the front seat, with the toddler in the middle. Sometime during the trip, the husband and wife had a disagreement. After all these years, I cannot recall what caused it.” That’s President Monson. “But I remember that their argument escalated, and became so heated that they were eventually yelling at one another. Understandably, this caused their young son to begin to cry, which the husband said only added to his anger. Losing total control of his temper, he picked up a toy the child had dropped on the seat and flung it in the direction of his wife. He missed hitting his wife. Instead, the toy struck their son, with the result that he was brain-damaged and would be handicapped for the rest of his life.”

  34:40 “One of the most tragic situations,” he says he’s ever encountered. “We spoke of commitment, responsibility, repentance, forgiveness. We prayed together.” He says, “I have not heard from them since that day so long ago.” And then he quotes, Doug, the scripture you quoted. “Verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, the father of contention. He stirs up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one toward another.” My guess is that there are people all over who, in just a moment of anger, have destroyed what takes years to build. If there’s someone out there listening, Doug, who really struggles with anger, first I think you’ve taught us accept that. Accept that, so you can do something about it. What would you say to do?

Dr. Doug Benson: 35:36 It goes back to this idea of mindfulness. Most people who know me have heard me say you can start today. In the case of this story, the impact of that would be long-lasting, and I would go back to this acceptance of weakness; recognizing that weakness can become strong, but only through, first, accepting that weakness. If I live in that moment, if I live in that car, the rest of my life will be about that car. Instead, I need to be here, where I am today, and address my anger now. President Monson talked about repentance, forgiveness, and these things that might focus on past behaviors and what we’ve done. Moving forward would be to focus on the present moment, focus on what’s my current emotion? If I’m noticing anger, go back to those ideas of how do I intervene now? How do I not act on this emotion now?

  36:40 Even in the story, I could hear, “Well, what would’ve happened if they would’ve addressed the anger at this point? Or at this point? Or at this point?” That’s only as helpful as it informs the current moment. It might be focusing on, “Okay, I know what I’ve done in the past, and I don’t like to repeat that, or I don’t want to repeat that. I don’t want to be the people in chapter 15 who wake up and do the same thing over.”

Hank Smith: 37:10 They howl and weep at night, and then they go back and do the exact same thing.

Dr. Doug Benson: 37:18 Yeah. Everything I say is harder than it sounds. People are going to give you all these comments. “Oh, sure, just act opposite your emotion. Just have faith.” We’re reading it coming from two people who have gone through things that I can’t imagine. “Oh, what? My entire civilization has been destroyed in front of my eyes in the most gruesome way I can describe?” And then Moroni reading about someone else’s exact situation that he’s going through, and he describes, “I have all these inadequacies, and this is how I feel about myself. I know that my weakness can become strong if I just have faith and hope and charity. If I just move forward, reminding myself that that is faith in Christ.”

Hank Smith: 38:12 I really like that. Accept and then say, “I don’t want this to keep happening. Therefore, what do I need to act?” Which is faith. “What do I need to do today?” And that’s not something we address on the podcast very often, but it is something that’s prevalent.

John Bytheway: 38:33 And in previous podcasts, we’ve talked about characters in the Book of Mormon whose intent is to stir people up into anger, remember how many times they used that phrase? “Stir them up to anger”, to get their own ends. That ought to caution us. Is somebody trying to stir me up to anger? Is it myself? It’s a good question.

Dr. Doug Benson: 38:54 Elder Bednar, in conference, talked about the Book of Mormon. In the beginning of his talk he said, “The Book of Mormon is not a history book. It’s a book that predicts the current moment and the future.” Our current times are filled with contention, divisiveness, and anger. People seemingly like loving and friendly people are angry about things on opposite sides of each other. A prophet of God talked about being peacemakers because we need to be peacemakers. That came at a very timely time. We thought there was division then, but it was a prophecy for us to say, “Hey, if we’re working on this when he gave that talk, then we’re prepared for the current moment.”

Hank Smith: 39:44 I’ve never thought of it that way. It was a prophecy, 12 months later. Now we’re going on two years later, and things have definitely escalated. I’m going to go back to his talk here. He says, “I invite you to examine your discipleship within the context of the way you treat others. I bless you to make any adjustments that may be needed so that your behavior is ennobling, respectful, and representative of a true follower of Jesus Christ. I bless you to replace belligerence with beseeching, animosity with understanding, and contention with peace.” That’s wonderful.

  40:27 Doug, you’ve walked us through these chapters, and honestly showed me things I had never seen before, that’s how incredible this book is. Before we let you go, our audience would be interested in how the Book of Mormon holds up against all of your experience. Here you’ve studied out of the best psychological books, you’ve done the research, and here we have this Book of Mormon that you also have read and studied a lot. How do you see it comparing to what you’ve read? Does it keep up with some of that great writing?

Dr. Doug Benson: 40:59 When I was a deacon, I don’t remember anything about this fireside I was at. They had a returned missionary, this guy who had gone somewhere, I remember he had a blow gun, so I’m assuming South America somewhere. It turns out he was a psychologist too, or he was going to school to be a psychologist. And I was, “Hey, maybe get some tips from this guy.” The thing I remember him saying is, “Oh, becoming a psychologist can be hard, and you should read your scriptures as much as you read everything else.” That’s understandable, because there are some things that conflict with what we believe within psychology and social sciences. I try to do that, and I can say what the Book of Mormon is. It is the Word of God. It is true.

  41:48 And so therefore, the books I read, and continue to read, about psychological principles or behavioral principles, the true principles in those are already woven into the Book of Mormon. We tear this chapter apart, and within it I see, oh, these principles already existed. There’s no discovery of a new way to look at thinking. It’s more about true principles being revealed. I talked about Alma 32 as being a behavioral experiment. Those are eternal principles, they’re not news. Even if we talk about them in more secular terms, true principles are true principles. The Book of Mormon is true, it’s the Word of God.

Hank Smith: 42:41 That fits with my experience as well in reading. I’ll be reading something that’s groundbreaking in whatever field and I’ll say, “Oh, yeah, that was in the Book of Mormon right there.” I can reference something that the Book of Mormon taught.

Dr. Doug Benson: 42:55 You might have to do what Moroni does to get that. It might not just be on the surface. When you study the scriptures, those truths, those mysteries, are open to you.

Hank Smith: 43:07 There is a difference between studying and reading. Maybe that involves writing, to come full circle to where we started. Thank you for spending your time with us. I think our listeners will walk away going, “You’ve given me some things I can do to help me in my own problems.” That’s the power of a good book and a good teacher.

Dr. Doug Benson: 43:26 Right.

Hank Smith: 43:27 So, with that, we want to thank Dr. Doug Benson for spending his time with us today. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen, and every episode, we remember our founder, the wonderful Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We are coming up to some of these final lessons in the Book of Mormon on followHIM.

  43:56 Before you skip to the next episode, I have some important information. This episode’s transcript and show notes are available on our website, followhim.co. That’s followhim.co. On our website, you’ll also find our two free books: Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, and Finding Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Both books are full of short and powerful quotes and insights from all our episodes from the Old and New Testaments. The digital copies of these books are absolutely free. You can watch the podcast on YouTube. Also, our Facebook and Instagram accounts have videos and extras you won’t find anywhere else.

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President Russell M. Nelson: 44:51 Whatever questions or problems you have, the answer is always found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Turn to Him. Follow Him.