Cultural: The story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis’ relationship to taking up arms is enigmatic. Mormon has selected the story, and includes it in his text. When he does so, he specifies the ‘moral” we are to take from the story (at the end of this chapter). What is most interesting is that the moral that Mormon takes from this story is different from what the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi tell us is the purpose of their remarkable pacifist stand. To further complicate the story itself, Ammon will later attribute yet another purpose, and therefore moral, to the story.
The story is clearly here because of the remarkable pacifist stance that these people will take, but that stance contradicts all other stories of conflict in the Book of Mormon. While this people are lauded for this act, it is never used as a model for Nephite behavior. The only others who will ever adopt this model are other Lamanites of this same generation. The children of this people will not follow in their parents covenant not to raise arms.
There are other anomalies in the story that are difficult to understand. At the top of the list is the assertion that the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi must repent of murders. The very idea that these people are accepting a universal guilt for murder is suspicious. Murder is, by definition, an unsanctioned and intended death inflicted on another person. We do not commit murder when one dies by accident, even if we were the particular instrument of the accident. We do not commit murder in war, as casualties in war are declared justified in any society. To top off our problem with the idea of murder we have the clear fact that the entire people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi appear to accept guilt for these “murders,” even women and children. It is inconceivable that every single man, woman, and child of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis had personally committed a murder. Nevertheless, their self-condemnation for these “murders” is so great that rather than any possible stain of those “murders” they would rather give up their lives. As we have the story in the Book of Mormon, there are more questions than answers. However, in the Mesoamerican cultural milieu, there is a condition that provides a background against which we can make sense of the story.
To give perspective to this enigma, we need to remember that these are people who had been part of the Lamanite lifestyle. That lifestyle retained a tradition of hatred towards the Nephites, but they had lost their concept of God, as we saw in the story of Aaron before the father of Lamoni. If we assume that the Lamanites became participants in the most widespread culture of the area, that which we see in the pre-Classic Maya, then we can begin to understand something of the religion and ideology behind this remarkable decision to lay down arms and not take them up again.
To understand the Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s, we must understand the nature of warfare among the Maya. It is the cult of war that supplies the necessary context for this story. Mesoamerican warfare is not European warfare. The ends, methods, purposes, and results are very different. Where European warfare is typically a struggle for territory, Mesoamerican warfare is a conflict between the gods, with the outcome directly linked to their concept of the universe. The motivations of Classic Maya warfare are so distinct from the European territorial struggles that one author notes:
“The aim of warfare, in part, was to capture prominent individuals from an enemy state, put them to torture and finally to sacrifice them, normally by beheading…” (David Drew. The Lost Chronicles of the Maya Kings. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999, p. 171).
For the Maya, blood was the conduit for ch’ulel, or the “inner soul or spirit.” (David Freidel, Linda Schele, Joy Parker. Maya Cosmos. William Morrow and Company, 1993, p. 201-2). The sacrificial letting of blood becomes both the food for the Gods, and the substitute sacrifice that renews creation. This principle of creation through sacrifice appears to have great antiquity in the Mesoamerican region:
“Puz, all the way from its Mixe-Zoque (and possibly Olmec) sources down to modern Quiche, refers literally to the cutting of flesh with a knife, and it is the primary term for sacrifice. If it is read as a synecdoche in the present passage [of the Popol Vuh], it means that the creation was accomplished (in part) through sacrifice…” (Dennis Tedlock. “Creation in the Popol Vuh: A Hermeneutical Approach.” Symbol and Meaning Beyond the Closed Community. Albany, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, The University at Albany, State University of New York, 1986, p. 79).
The sacrificial blood could and did come from the king and his queen themselves. However, it was augmented by the blood of the captives taken in war. Warfare and the taking of captives were intimately connected with the religious concepts of sacrificial blood. The Classic Maya inscriptions glorify the personal conquests of the kings and the humiliation and sacrifice of their captives. The Bonampak mural commonly known as “the arraignment” is a graphic depiction of the torturous bloodletting inflicted upon captives. (Linda Schele, Mary Ellen Miller. The Blood of Kings. New York. George Braziller, Inc. 1986, p. 217).
It is in this context of a religion that combines the concepts of war with that of human sacrifice and torture that we may see a backdrop that makes sense of the declaration of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis. These were people who had grown up with a worldview that saw the waging of war for the capture of sacrificial victims as essential to continued existence. Men, women, and children all participated in this worldview, whether or not they participated in the actual warfare. Whether or not they actually captured anyone, whether or not they actually tortured or killed the captives, they actively participated through their belief in, and support of, that religious practice.
In this context, let us return to verse 11:
11 And now behold, my brethren, since it has been all that we could do, (as we were the most lost of all mankind) to repent of all our sins and the many murders which we have committed, and to get God to take them away from our hearts, for it was all we could do to repent sufficiently before God that he would take away our stain—
Outside of our Mesoamerican context, this verse is difficult to understand. Why would it have been so hard to accept the gospel? What made it such that “it has been all that we could do…?” With the context of the Mesoamerican religion, we can answer this question. These people were required to renounce an entire view of the world. For them it would have been as large a change as some unusual modern event that required us to forsake science entirely in favor of medieval alchemy. It was a change that rocked the very fundamental assumptions they made about such simple concepts as why the sun rose every day. While there is not the clear sun worship that we find among the later Aztecs, the Aztecs sacrificed their war victims to fuel the movement of the sun, believing that to cease to do so would cause the sun to stop in its course.
Imagine how far these people had to come! They came from a worldview that told them that it was essential to capture sacrificial victims and shed their blood for the world to exist. They must now forsake that entire concept and believe that the only sacrifice needed would be that of the Atoning Messiah who was to come. They came from a worldview that glorified warfare and human sacrifice, and adopted a worldview that condemned that very practice, that suffered warfare as a defensive necessity. No wonder they considered themselves “the most lost of all mankind..!”
It is this cult of war that answers the problem of the Anti-Nephi-Lehi pacifism. Their decision not to pick up arms was not taken because of the inherent evil of self-defense, but as alcoholics must be constantly vigilant against their disease, these people chose to stay far from the feelings surrounding the cult of war. Rather than risk a return to their former taste for sacrificial blood, they chose to avoid even the very first step along that path. Their decision to lay down their arms was not a statement against the value of self -defense, but a defensive measure required to protect their newfound cleanliness from the excesses of that former life.