Mosiah 9 is the first chapter recounting the story of Zeniff and his people, who went up from the land of Zarahemla to recapture or obtain the land of Nephi from the Lamanites. In it, we read that Zeniff was part of an earlier expedition formed for that same purpose, but whose strategy was more military in nature. An army had been assembled for the purpose of driving the Lamanites out of the land of Nephi, or killing those who would not be driven. Zeniff was a part of this army, and was sent to spy out the Lamanites in advance, the he “might spy out their forces, that our army might come upon them and destroy them.” (All quotes are from Mosiah Chapter 9.)
In the process of doing this, Zeniff observed that there was some good in the Lamanites, and he “was desirous that they should not be destroyed.” He came back to the Nephite encampments and tried to persuade an “austere and a blood-thirsty” leader that they should not go forward with the invasion. This unnamed leader must have seen mutiny in Zeniff and ordered that he be killed, but Zeniff’s life was saved by the “shedding of much blood.” As a result of this conflict, “the greater number of the army was destroyed in the wilderness” and those remaining returned to Zarahemla.
In hindsight, Zeniff describes himself as being “overzealous to inherit the land of our fathers,” and so he took all that would go with him and returned to the land of Nephi. In their travels up to the land of Nephi, they were “smitten with famine and sore afflictions” because they were “slow to remember the Lord our God,” but I wonder if God (knowing what awaited them) was intending to warn them off from the expedition altogether.
Upon arriving at the land of Nephi, Zeniff walks in to see the Lamanite king of the city, that he could find out “the disposition of the king” and if he could “go in with [his] people and possess the land in peace.” The Lamanite king acceded to this request, and commanded all of his people to leave their homes in the city and move somewhere else. We are not told whether the people of Zeniff compensated the Lamanites for this, but Zeniff editorializes that “it was the cunning and the craftiness of king Laman, to bring my people into bondage, that he yielded up the land that we might possess it.”
Soon, it was time to pay the proverbial piper, and the people of Zeniff were faced with being surrounded by a hostile force that was bent on dominating them, and by the time Ammon came from Zarahemla, they were enslaved and were required to pay taxes of half of all they produced to the Lamanites in order to keep their lives. In the end, Zeniff’s overzealousness in attempting to accomplish something he believed to be good resulted in his entire people being put into captivity. His judgment was clouded, and he and his loved ones paid a terrible price.
A friend pointed out to me that we should look upon Zeniff with some sympathy. He thought he was pursuing a good goal, and he certainly was not intending a life of slavery for his people, his children and his grandchildren. The nature of the human condition is that we rarely have future knowledge of the full consequences of our actions, and so I agree that we should not judge Zeniff too harshly.
The same goes in our lives. While we should not be too hard on ourselves for falling into traps that are cleverly designed and concealed, there are many things that we should recognize. Simply put, there are traps waiting for all of us. These have been placed in our path and are often very enticing. Often, we step into those traps as a result of good motivations and intentions, but doing a bad thing is almost always a bad thing regardless of our motivations.
There are plenty of examples that can be brought to bear. For instance, we often see parents doing things out of love for their children that does not help their children in the long run, and actually sets them up for failure. A couple with which I am acquainted has a son that has fallen on hard times. He has become dependent on smoking marijuana on a regular basis, and had gotten into legal trouble and expelled from the public university he was attending as a result. He recognized that his life was in shambles and spiraled into depression. These parents, due to the love for the son, decided that the answer to this problem was to travel to Colorado in order to procure a large amount of marijuana and to bring it back to Utah to give it to the son. In their way of thinking, they thought they were doing something noble, and the fact that it was performed out of love justified the illegality of it, and further justified the deleterious effects of continuing and supporting this destructive drug habit.
We see this story over and over again. A child, or a spouse, or a parent, tells their family that if they love them, they must support them in one sinful or destructive enterprise or another. Further, there is often an element of blackmail in it, as the child, spouse or parent takes the position that he or she will only feel the love of family if they accept or affirm the sinful or destruction enterprise, and if this wayward person does not feel like they are loved that there is not any love at all. And so, a grieving family is faced with what seems to be an impossible choice: do I love this family member in the way that they demand, or do I try to help them avoid taking steps that will only result in pain and damnation? Sometimes, in being overzealous in wanting that family member to be right there and not in pain, the family chooses to support the wayward member in destructive activities. Sometimes, in being overzealous to keep the family together right now, we do great damage to the possibility of the family continuing in eternity.
We also see this in those that are overzealous to achieve a good thing, but not in the Lord’s time. Denver Snuffer and Mike Stroud are examples of people who promise a path to the divine on your own timetable, and not the Lord’s. Many of their followers, in being overzealous for this outcome, find themselves being deceived and disillusioned in pursuing what they thought was a good and worth goal.
As Zeniff saw that he had fallen into a trap, he was repentant, but the chains with which his people were shackled were forged on the day that he went in to see the Lamanite king. That is the nature of traps. The same is true in our families. When we choose to accept, celebrate or support sin, we are helping to fit shackles to the unfortunate member of our family, which will be loosed only with great difficulty. In the process we put distance between ourselves and God, the one being that we know could actually help. The irony of it is that family that stays together in encouraging sin, will not stay together long.