‘FORGIVE-ME-NOT’: THOUGHTS ON CONFLICT

By Roslyn Lawrance

On a glorious spring day in England, I jotted down some thoughts on conflict, both in our personal lives and between nations. As I wrote, the sun was shining in a clear blue sky, and my children shed their sweaters and jackets as they played in the garden. Everywhere had come gloriously to life after the long hibernation. The daffodils and primroses, which had previously looked desperately bedraggled as they struggled against the endless winds, rains and night frosts, were suddenly radiant and glorious, bobbing gently in the soft breezes. Our resident robin sat on the fence, hopeful that someone would turn over the soil and expose a juicy worm or two for him, and in the willow tree, a blackbird trilled its song. My children were healthy and content, and I was at peace.

As I watched them play, I was reminded of my mother, who had once lived in the house I now called home, for the garden was full of the flowers she loved so much and planted in happy profusion. More than anything else, the forget-me-nots reminded me of her, because they were her special favourites and grew with complete abandon, spreading themselves wherever there was a nook or cranny they could appropriate. Whenever I visited her, she would dig up a clump for me to take home and plant in my own garden, and my little daughter, who somehow misunderstood their name, would point in delight at the ‘forgive-me-nots’, and help me water them into their new home. Her innocent mistake seemed so apposite in our world of turmoil that the name stuck, and as I looked out on that spring day onto all that was unspeakably precious to me, it seemed especially poignant. For once again, we were at war. Once again, we were sending our young men to certain danger and possible death. Once again, we were wreaking destruction and devastation on those who had already suffered horrors beyond imagining. Once again, I found myself asking endless questions. Once again, the answers were frustratingly elusive.

In the years since then, my children have grown up and some have children of their own, but we have remained involved in conflicts in far off places, and I have continued to wrestle with my own feelings about conflict in our personal lives, and my struggle to reconcile the practice of war with living the gospel of peace.

I remember having to learn some of Caesar’s Gallic Wars when I studied Latin at school. It was something of an education in the realities of warfare. About the same time, I decided to read The Old Testament cover to cover, and was shocked and horrified by some of the more brutal passages. Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I also read in my teens, confirmed for me the waste and savagery of war. And growing up in post-war England, I heard plenty of first-hand accounts of both the Great War and the Second World War.

My father was a child in London in the 1940s, and he and my grandparents lived through the Blitz. Indeed, a house yards from their own was obliterated, while theirs was left intact. My mother’s family lived in Sussex, south of London, but watched the German bombers fly over on their way to drop their deadly load on the capital. Sometimes, a bomb would be dropped prematurely, and one landed on the cinema in the town where the family lived, killing more than a hundred children who were there for the matinee performance. Their tiny graves in the town cemetery remain a grim reminder of what we now call collateral damage. Our headmaster told us of the horror of listening to doodlebugs fly over, and how he would breathe a sigh of relief when the engines kept humming until they passed by, knowing that, today at least, it would be some other village that would be devastated when they fell silent and dropped to earth. My grandfather lied about his age to go to fight in the cavalry in 1915, and was in France for most of the war, but he kept his experiences to himself. They were too terrible to talk about. All he would say was, ‘The rats were dreadful. You’ve never seen such rats.’ Like so many, my great uncle did not come home from the Great War, making his young wife a widow for the second time, and I grew up among a generation of elderly spinsters for whom there had been no opportunity to marry, because there had been so few young men available in the 1920s.

In my late teens, I saw at first hand the appalling barbarity of war and terrorism when I worked as a nurse in London, at a time when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was targeting English cities. Sometimes we would hear a bomb go off, and one blew in the front of our nursing school when the building next door was attacked. Bomb victims often came to our hospital for treatment, and we also looked after men injured in various conflicts throughout the world. Sammy was the same age I was, and had been fighting with the Christian militia in Lebanon for three years. He came to us after he was shot in the face, losing one eye, and much of the sight in the other. There was a Kurdish freedom fighter, the right side of his face and body terribly disfigured by a bomb blast, and an Iraqi soldier, reluctant to leave  to go back home and fight again. They shared with me something of their experiences, and their passion, or otherwise, for the causes for which they were fighting. It was a shocking awakening for a girl from the kind of sheltered, privileged background I had known. I began to be aware of the impact we in the developed world have on the rest of our global neighbours.

I remember with great affection others from very different cultures who have touched my life in profound ways for a brief time. Titi and Mariam were two little Iranian girls who lived with us for a couple of summers. Families like theirs were persecuted after the revolution, and I never found out what became of them. Felicien lived in Burundi, and we wrote to each other for several years before his government forbade our correspondence. I have often wondered whether he survived the violence of subsequent years.

I am deeply grateful to have known them and so many others, and something of the struggles and persecutions that shaped their lives. For a naïve English girl who took freedom, safety and security so much for granted, their stories were distressingly illuminating, and shocked me out of indifference to the plight of many of the world’s inhabitants. I learned that what I do matters, and may have an impact on people I do not know, and repercussions for those whose lives I will never directly touch. The complexities of the global community in which we live started to dawn on me, and, since then, I have never been able to look at myself as simply English, or British, or Western, or Latter-day Saint. I am, of course, all of these, but I also share this planet with billions of my spirit brothers and sisters, whose lives are just as precious as mine, and who are just as deserving of the same freedoms and advantages I am able to take for granted.

When I was a student nurse in London, living under the threat of IRA bomb attacks, I was not so much aware of the kind of intemperate polemics and histrionics we see so frequently in the media today. Our modern access to immediate platforms, where we can vent our intolerant or bigoted views freely and anonymously, has led to all kinds of ill-informed views being aired with certainty and anger, and with contempt for those holding different opinions. It was not that we condoned the actions of the terrorists. Certainly, those of us who saw the results of their atrocities could find no possible excuse for their behaviour. However, we did not allow them to dictate terms to us. We continued to live our lives as we had done before. When our nursing school was damaged by the bomb blast next door, we stepped over the rubble and held classes as usual. We were not encouraged to fear the terrorists, nor were we whipped up into a frenzy of hatred against them. While we condemned their outrages and supported every effort to bring them to justice, we also wanted to understand them and their motivation. It seemed a constructive way forward, and felt much more comfortable than anger, hatred, or fear. It was, I think, a very healthy sang-froid.

During that time, I nursed a man who had been horribly burned by a phosphorus shell. Some called him a terrorist, others a freedom fighter. To me, he was simply a man, weak, young, vulnerable, in pain. He talked to me about the cause he espoused. To this day, I do not know how right or wrong he was. I know he had suffered injustice and oppression I can scarcely imagine. How does one fight such things when one has no voice, no power? At what point does legitimate defence become unwarranted aggression? It did not seem appropriate to judge him. Knowing him taught me about different perspectives, about seeing the other side of the story. It taught me about the helplessness and hopelessness so many of our global brothers and sisters feel. It taught me how hugely advantaged I am by comparison to most of the world’s population. It taught me that it is arrogant to judge those whose sufferings I cannot begin to imagine. And it taught me that I never, ever want to be motivated by anger, or hate, or fear, or some sense of innate superiority.

I am deeply sceptical of the posturing of the polemicists, and of the absolutes in which the propagandists deal so skilfully.  Truth does not reveal herself easily to the casual seeker, I think, and those in the media who would whip us up into a frenzy of hate, anger and partisanship, by reducing complex issues to simplistic platitudes, take advantage of the intellectually lazy, and they insult the honest in heart. But how well their tactics work!

I was in conversation a while ago with a woman who believed that we should not allow immigration for those who follow Islam. They are not culturally suited to living in our society, she told me. They want Sharia law to prevail and do not know how to treat women with respect. There was no moving her from a position she held with absolute certainty. The anger she felt that we should show any latitude to such people was clear, and she proclaimed it assertively and loudly. It hurt my soul to hear her views, and I thought, among others, of my much-loved son-in-law, who comes from just such an immigrant family. He was raised a Muslim, and is a man who could teach many Christians, including Latter-day Saints, what it means to be a good and honourable man, an upstanding citizen of a western country, and a devoted and exemplary husband. Our family would be the poorer had his family not been allowed to immigrate here.

Democracy and liberty surely give us not only the right to freedom of speech, but also the obligation to think deeply and to explore widely as we form our views. How can a population make democratic decisions when only one view, or a narrow selection of views, are allowed open expression, while all others are derided, denigrated or dismissed as negative and subversive? And if any of us is associated with a cause that operates by maligning those whose views oppose it, are we not diminished by that association? And surely, those of us who enjoy more freedom than much of the world’s population can dream of, can afford to treat those who disagree with us with courtesy and good grace?

And so in those difficult times, and in the difficult times that have continued to come upon us for all kinds of reasons, I have turned for comfort and wisdom to the scriptures, especially to the Book of Mormon. I find it has much to offer us, for whom it was, after all, written, as we seek guidance on the issues we face in our private lives, in our national lives, and as a global community.

The Book of Mormon societies certainly seemed at the very least to be open to newcomers, even when they must have come in large numbers. The descendants of Mulek in Zarahemla allowed the Nephites not only to join them, but to dominate their government and language, installing the Nephite Mosiah as king over their new society (see Omni 1:12-19). We have no idea of the size of either population, but we know that the original people of Zarahemla outnumbered the Nephites during the reign of Mosiah, grandson of that first Mosiah (see Mosiah 25:2), so it seems reasonable to infer that the incomers had always been in the minority. In spite of the Mulekites’ superiority of numbers, and the very different cultures that had clearly developed during some 350 years since the two societies left Jerusalem, Ameleki’s account suggests that it was a friendly amalgamation. Of course, Amaleki was a Nephite, and the Mulekites would probably have told the story differently, but it was certainly not a hostile takeover.

Later, when Limhi’s people leave the land they settled in the time of his grandfather, to escape Lamanite tyranny, they head for Zarahemla, and join Mosiah and his people. Again, we have no idea of the numbers involved, but the colony had required Lamanite guards to prevent them from leaving, had raised armies to face the Lamanites, and produced enough in tribute to make it worthwhile to the Lamanites to force them to stay. This was not an insignificant influx for the people of Zarahemla to absorb, yet Mosiah ‘received them with joy …’ (Mosiah 22:14). Would that all refugees escaping slavery and forced labour could find such a welcome.

Alma’s colony, too, headed straight for Zarahemla after their miraculous deliverance from Lamanite bondage, not too long after Limhi and his people arrived there. Again, ‘… king Mosiah did also receive them with joy’ (Mosiah 24:25). It seems the arrival of a refugee population was a cause to celebrate for the Nephites.

It could be argued that the peoples of Zarahemla, Limhi and Alma shared a common heritage and had much in common. However, the descendants of Mulek had kept no records, their language was corrupted and unintelligible to the Nephites, and they denied the religion that was so important in Nephite culture (see Omni 1:17). They must have seemed very other to Mosiah and his people. Equally, although both Limhi and Alma’s colonies had only been separated from the main body of the Nephites for three generations, their culture had undergone significant apostasy and instability. There would have been a learning process and a necessity to give and take as they assimilated back into mainstream Nephite society.

However alike these societies may have been, or however closely related they regarded themselves, the same cannot be said of the Lamanites. In spite of their common ancestor, Lehi, they could hardly have considered themselves more unlike the Nephites, and the Nephites could not have regarded them as anything other than culturally, socially and religiously different, and hostile in every way. According to the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites had, ‘taught their children that they should hate [the Nephites], and that they should murder them, and that they should rob and plunder them, and do all they could to destroy them; therefore they have an eternal hatred towards the children of Nephi’ (Mosiah 10:17, see also vv 12-16). Nephites and Lamanites simply did not mix.

Nevertheless, after Ammon and his brothers, the sons of Mosiah, underwent a miraculous conversion, they embarked on missions to the Lamanites, and during a period of fourteen years achieved remarkable success in some of the cities where they preached. This provoked intense persecution, resulting in the deaths of many of the Lamanite converts. Ammon advocated fleeing the Lamanite land, and joining the Nephites in Zarahemla. Understandably, the newly converted Lamanites doubted that they would be welcomed with open arms, but they made the journey and waited while Ammon presented their case to the leaders in Zarahemla. After consultation with their citizens, the Nephites gave up land to this new refugee population, their erstwhile bitterest enemies, accepting their pacifist stance and the need for their own armies to guard them from Lamanite hostility (see Alma 27:4-24). It turned out to be a good decision, and benefited the Nephites in the years that followed, but they initially gave refuge to the Lamanites because it was the right thing to do, not because it looked as though they had anything to gain by the arrangement.

The Book of Mormon has something to say about conflict between nations too, which has application for conflict of a more personal nature, as well as for war in general.

In the Nephite colony established by Zeniff, during the reign of his son, the wicked King Noah, a few of his subjects converted to the gospel through Alma’s preaching, fleeing into the wilderness to escape the king’s armies. After Noah’s son, Limhi, succeeded him, and instituted a more equitable government, their Lamanite overlords began to ‘exercise authority over them; and began to put heavy burdens upon their backs, and drive them as they would a dumb ass -’ (Mosiah 21:3). There is no doubt these Nephites were suffering unrighteous dominion. Three times they went to battle against the Lamanites, each time suffering great losses. It was not until they humbled themselves, submitting to unrighteous dominion, that they were delivered from Lamanite bondage, without bloodshed, after the arrival of Ammon from the Nephite kingdom at Zarahemla.

Meanwhile, Alma and his converts created another colony in the wilderness, where they came into subjection to the Lamanites under the apostate Nephite priest, Amulon. He had a particular axe to grind with Alma, and persecuted the Nephites to the extent that they were not even allowed to pray vocally on pain of death. Alma’s people, under his guidance, submitted to this oppression and offered no resistance or violence. Eventually, the Lord directed them to their freedom, again without bloodshed.

During the time that the Lord was preaching among the Jews, many Lamanites and Nephites  converted to the gospel when the signs of the Saviour’s birth, prophesied by Samuel the Lamanite, were fulfilled. There was also much wickedness, however, and the Gadianton robbers, under Giddianhi, enjoyed a considerable swelling of their ranks. The Nephites knew Giddianhi planned to attack them, and pleaded with their military leader, Gidgiddoni, ‘Pray unto the Lord, and let us go up upon the mountains and into the wilderness, that we may fall upon the robbers and destroy them in their own lands. But Gidgiddoni saith unto them: The Lord forbid; for if we should go up against them the Lord would deliver us into their hands; therefore we will prepare ourselves in the center of our lands, and we will gather all our armies together, and we will not go against them, but we will wait till they shall come against us; therefore, as the Lord liveth, if we do this he will deliver them into our hands’ (3 Nephi 3:21). The Nephites did exactly that, and suffered all kinds of plundering and raids by the Gadianton robbers, but did not fight them until, ‘Giddianhi gave commandment unto his armies that…they should go up to battle against the Nephites’ (3 Nephi 4:6). The Nephites beat them back to their own lands, Giddianhi was killed in flight, and his successor, Zemnarihah, hanged. The Nephites’ ‘hearts were swollen with joy, unto the gushing out of many tears, because of the great goodness of God in delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; and they knew it was because of their repentance and their humility that they had been delivered from an everlasting destruction’ (3 Nephi 4:33).

Much later, Mormon led the Nephites many times in battle against the Lamanites who were encroaching on Nephite land. Eventually, although the war was a defensive one, ‘I, Mormon, did utterly refuse from this time forth to be a commander and a leader of this people, because of their wickedness and abomination’ (Mormon 3:11). What wickedness were they guilty of? They ‘began to boast in their own strength, and began to swear before the heavens that they would avenge themselves of the blood of their brethren who had been slain by their enemies. And they did swear by the heavens, and also by the throne of God, that they would go up to battle against their enemies, and would cut them off from the face of the land’ (Mormon 3:9-10). Mormon tells us, ‘…the voice of the Lord came unto me, saying: Vengeance is mine, and I will repay …’ (Mormon 3:14-15). Later, speaking directly to latter-day Lamanites, Mormon says, ‘Know ye that ye must lay down your weapons of war, and delight no more in the shedding of blood, and take them not again, save it be that God shall command you’ (Mormon 7:4).

There are, of course, plenty of examples in the Book of Mormon of defensive wars being fought with the Lord’s sanction. The spirit of justified conflict is summed up thus, ‘… they were compelled reluctantly to contend with their brethren, the Lamanites. … Now, they were sorry to take up arms against the Lamanites, because they did not delight in the shedding of blood; … Nevertheless, they could not suffer to lay down their lives, that their wives and their children should be massacred by the barbarous cruelty of those who were once their brethren …’ (Alma 48:21, 23-24).

These examples, while providing no cut and dried answers to the complex situations we must address in our global community, in our national or in our personal lives, lead me to consider the following ideas.

There will be times when it is necessary to defend ourselves and our families from the depredations of the wicked. Armed conflict in such situations may be a responsibility and a necessity. However, where an occupying force is in power because of the disobedience and wickedness of the occupied, the Lord seems to require submission rather than armed attack.

Moreover, even the righteous and penitent may have their faith tried and tested by persecution and unrighteous domination. Submission may once again be the prerequisite to deliverance. Alma and his people demonstrate that it is possible, even under subjugation, to maintain faith and integrity while waiting for deliverance.

It seems also that while we have the right to defend our homes, we tread on dangerous ground when we attack the enemy in his own territory, even when we know he intends to attack us. The Lord required the Nephites to submit to the Gadianton raiding parties, and only sanctioned fighting the robbers as far as the borders of their own land. Could it be that the ‘everlasting destruction’ (see 3 Nephi 4:33), from which the Nephites under Giddgidoni were delivered, implies that their salvation might have been in jeopardy had they fought a war that had been in any way offensive, regardless of the undoubted culpability of the robbers?

Moreover, how we treat the vanquished is important. Nephite generals stopped killing at the first possible opportunity, and they allowed enemy soldiers to leave their lands without recriminations (see, for example, Moroni in Alma 52:35-38 and Moronihah in Helaman 1:32-34). To oppress others because they have tried to oppress us is no justification. To treat our enemies with cruelty, or to adopt tit for tat tactics, is to put ourselves in a position where we cannot reasonably ask for God’s assistance or blessing.

Finally, motive matters. A defensive war is not necessarily a righteous war if it is fought for reasons of vengeance, or to glory in some sense of superiority. I wonder how often in our national as well as our personal lives, divine approval is withdrawn because our hearts are not right. The Book of Mormon, it seems, has much to teach us about how to conduct international relations. And on a smaller scale, these lessons can be applied to more local politics, and to how we relate to one another.

We know that the spirit of contention is of Satan, not of Christ, and that it is the devil who ‘stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another’ (3 Nephi 11:29). And we know, too, ‘There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love’ (1 John 4:18). It surely cannot be pleasing to the Lord to see His children deliberately provoking fear, anger, suspicion and intolerance among themselves, whether as individuals or as nations. Moreover, to use violence, in word or deed, as our first line of defence seems a dangerous practice.

As Joseph F. Smith taught, ‘[Christ’s] perfected philosophy teaches … that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong’ (1).  And from David O. McKay, ‘Men must change their way of thinking! Change their way of feeling! Instead of hating and fighting and crushing one another, they should learn to love! … If it be possible, so far as in us lies, let us live peaceably with all men – not overcoming evil by evil, or being overcome by evil, but overcoming evil with good’ (2).

As for ‘forgive-me-nots’, well, I hope they are a gentle reminder to my children, as they are to me, that life is much too short and much too precious to spend time hating each other, or being suspicious simply because someone is not the same as us, and does not do things in the same way. There is a richness in diversity that is stimulating and dynamic, and we all have so much to learn from one another, if we could get away from the attitude of superiority that insists we are better or more right than our neighbour. Our differences should excite us because of the learning opportunities they create, rather than automatically dividing us because we feel threatened. There seems little hope if we cannot even forgive each other for being or looking different; if we cannot forgive those who hold different views, even if we regard them as ill-informed; or if we cannot forgive different cultural or religious practices.

I hope, too, that I will never withhold my forgiveness, not only because I would have a greater measure of the pure love of Christ, but also because I have much need myself of forgiveness; as an individual, because I am mortal and weak, and often fail to behave as I should; as a citizen of a country with an imperial past, the repercussions of which are still being felt throughout the world among disadvantaged people; and as one of the most privileged members of a global community, where the rich and powerful have every advantage, while the weak and the vulnerable suffer injustice, poverty and humiliation that the heavens must weep to see.

There cannot be justice or peace or equality without forgiveness. May we not feed our prejudices, or allow others to feed them. May we not look only at the truths, ideologies and opinions that are comfortable for us, or that confirm our own biases. May we be untouched by bitterness, hatred, anger and fear as we relate to those with whom we have differences. And may we look urgently, and as a matter of priority, for better, more peaceable ways to do things, both as individuals and as nations.

REFERENCES

1     Smith, Joseph Fielding (1939) Gospel Doctrine, Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City,         

       p.128

2    McKay, David O. (2003) Teachings of the Presidents of the Church, The Church of Jesus

     Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, pp. 199 and 230