The seductive appeal of Nehorism was that it promised a prize without price; a victory without effort; an eternal glory without goodness. 15 It ignored the eternally present fact of cause and effect in spiritual phenomena. By holding that a man’s misuse of his free agency was but an inconsequential element in his qualifying for exaltation, Nehor was inferentially questioning the very existence of that Free Agency. The tragedy that besets those nations who repudiate responsibility for their evil conduct, and the moral decadence which inevitably follows such repudiation, are unforgettably portrayed in chapters 14 through 16 of this great Book of Alma.
Nehor is dead, but Nehorism lives on. Dressed in a variety of philosophical habiliments and religious disguises, its influence is found almost everywhere. It can be felt, for example, in the current mechanistic philosophies of the day, according to whose teachings man consists in nothing more than an amazingly complex biological mechanism.
“You don’t punish or condemn a broken machine”; it is argued, “you fix it.”
With this easy, and dangerously superficial analysis of the whole problem of human sin, they absolve mankind from any moral culpability for individual wrongdoing, and thus pave the way to spiritual corruption and death. Other philosophies of the day place great stress on the fact that man is, as it were, but a chip of wood floating helplessly on the stormy waves of life. He is mercilessly seized and held by the titanic forces of creation, over which he has no control. It is so easy, then, to pass from this hypothesis to that comfortable but fallacious conclusion that man is therefore powerless to control himself, or anything around him, and that he therefore cannot be held responsible, by God or man, for his acts of wickedness.
The true Gospel of Jesus Christ postulates, as its logical starting point, the proposition that every man born into this world is given his own Free Agency, and that for the proper exercise thereof he will be held morally responsible. This autonomous freedom is one of God’s most priceless endowments, and is inseparably linked with those other elements of man’s composite make-up which are without beginning or end. Exaltation or condemnation result from the use, or misuse, of this incomparable gift, and even He who made us all will hold Himself obedient to the inviolacy of this Eternal Truth.
It is true that God’s greatest and highest objective is to realize the Salvation and Exaltation of the greatest number of His spirit children.
For behold, this is My work and My glory—to bring to pass the Immortality and Eternal Life of man. (Moses 1:39.)
It might be added, parenthetically, that in attaining this exalted end, the principle of Repentance remains eternally operative, and thus enables sinners, at any point throughout eternity, to renounce their sins, and return again to righteousness.
In further answer to Nehorism, it may be admitted that that which we call freedom is not always completely free, as far as this life’s experiences are concerned. No one disputes, for example, that children reared in righteous homes enjoy immeasurably better opportunities for developing worth-while lives than do children reared in homes of slothfulness or carnality. The standard texts on sociology carry pages of impressive figures to illustrate this fact. The Lord has recognized this principle by holding parents personally responsible for their failure to teach their children the doctrines of the Kingdom. The sins of these wayward children, to the extent that such sins result from the parents’ dereliction of duty, are visited upon the heads of the parents themselves.
And again, inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents. (D. & C. 68:25)
There is little question, moreover, that human conduct is influenced, in part, by environmental and hereditary factors, over some of which, at least, the actor has little or no immediate control. It is demonstrated beyond reasonable dispute that physiological and psychological disturbances, many of which are unavoidable, do influence human conduct, and that there are many people in this world whose natural mental endowment is insufficient to permit them to exercise a completely independent, or intelligent choice. For the making of such defective choices as they may be required to make, therefore, they shall not be held responsible, in the eyes of Divine Justice. It behooves all other men, therefore, to show forth Christian charity and understanding towards those who are thus afflicted, and to render to them such help as human effort, love, and ingenuity are able to supply.
To leap, however, from the above self-evident proposition to that sophistical conclusion that normal men and women have no free agency whatsoever, is to leap from the brightness of truth into the darkest abyss of error. Men do have free agency, and for the exercise thereof they will be held accountable. If it should be shown that in any particular case a man’s moral and spiritual defections are due to mental or physical disease, or to an oppressively adverse environment over which he has little or no control, then surely God will not judge him unjustly. On the other hand, to the extent that his evil conduct proximately results from the misuse of that degree of free agency with which he has been endowed, then to that extent he will be judged, and will be held morally responsible. This is the eternal order of Heaven, and such order will not, and cannot, change.
In this connection, it would be difficult to refrain from quoting the two celebrated passages of the New Testament which foretell the great Judgment which shall come upon all who have lived upon the face of the earth.
Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. (29.)
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:12-15)
To the above passages we add the words of Alma, which constitute his direct and unequivocal refutation to Nehorism:
... but it was appointed unto men that they must die; and after death, they must come to judgment, even that same judgment of which we have spoken, which is the end. (Alma 12:27.)