1 Nephi 17

From then on we travelled east. Or eastward. I can’t remember if they mean the same thing, but I think eastward means “from the east,” i.e., “west.” No wonder Moses wandered.

It was ridiculous what we went through, including having babies. Have you ever had babies in tents? Let alone trying to sleep with them on the ground. But some of us called everything a blessing from God. We all agreed that good hunting was a blessing, along with lots of breast milk for the babies. Our wives had a lot of nerve, which really counts in travels like ours. Great gals, except for the homicidal impulses.

The lesson: try to do God’s will and he gives you what you need, though sometimes just enough of it to not die. If you asked us how we did, I can indisputably say: okay.

Eight years of this, though. Eight years.

At one point during that time, can’t say exactly when, it’s all a blur, we ran across a place with lots of fruit—colored fruit, by the way, none of that white kind—and lots of honey, along with the creatures who make it. God had obviously dealt a wild card under the table to us, a few goodies to keep us from hating the trip like we had a good right to do. We called this place Bountiful, next to a sea we called Irreantum. (I don’t know, I thought you might. Sounds like Latin, but I know Dad doesn’t speak it.)

We saw the seashore and couldn’t help but fall in love with it. Finally some ocean air, free bath privileges round the clock, and maybe decent fishing. It looked pretty too. So we pitched our tents on the sand, which didn’t prove very sturdy. Someone should write a parable about that someday.

I was really enjoying myself as a kind of beach bum, till God spoke to me and told me to go up the mountainside. When I got there he told me to build a boat according to his specs. That boat was meant for me and my family to sail away on. The only problem? No tools. You can’t build a boat with a bow and arrow.

I asked God where he could get me some ore to melt down and forge into tools. He told me. Then I made a bellows out of animal skins, struck two stones together and used the bellows to blow the fire. Seemed like a lot of work on the bellows for what I got out of them. But I had to take advantage of this pass that God had just given me. Up till now he told us not to make fire and specifically not to cook our food since he’d just make it all taste sweet to us even when it was raw. Trust me, that was an act of faith. It worked, but you really don’t want all food to taste sweet. So I was glad that now he was lifting the fire ban.

Oh, and there was the light issue: no torches because he would lead our way even at night. Problematic. But let’s not get into that. (Check whether something is a metaphor before you act on it.)

God also said that when we got to the promised land, we’d remember how good he was. We’d cheated death by his grace. So I tried to do his will and tell everyone else to do the same.

Anyway, back to the ore. I moltened—is that the right word?—some out of a rock. My brothers took me to task, of course. Nephi’s a fool. He’s got no pipeline to heaven. Shipbuilding isn’t for amateurs. And him sailing an ocean we can’t see the opposite shore of? No way.

Upshot: they didn’t help me. And I was mad, though I morphed it into sad. The brothers saw me looking hangdog and that actually made them pretty happy. They felt vindicated in their contempt and told me as much. They also made fun of how much I aped Dad. “You’re so just like him,” they said. “Maybe without your help we’d have made good with our lives, maybe followed Dad in his business, maybe had kids in more sanitary conditions, not to mention having had more of a choice in who we had them with. We left our ritzy house in a top-dog neighborhood for this? And what about our friends? Don’t tell us you’re more righteous, just because you have visions and preach to us all the time.” (Not an exact quote, I know. But close enough.)

I was armed for bear on this one. If Moses hadn’t listened to God, I said, you’d all be slaves. Sucky work, whip-brandishing overlords, scummy water, stinky food, and worse. That’s it till you die. I told them about the Exodus, which they probably hadn’t thought about in a long time. God drops manna from the sky, Moses smacks water from a stone, God drops the Red Sea on the Egyptian soldiers, etc. If there’s anything you personally have in common with the Israelites back then, I told them, it’s your crappy attitude. So you’re apparently next on God’s docket.

As for your old friends being righteous, just remember they were the ones arguing that Dad be murdered in the name of Judaism. And face it, you probably would’ve signed onto that too.

Now I’m not saying that God doesn’t regard everyone as equals. I don’t want to undersell his character. He let even the non-stop complainer Israelities make it into their promised land. He has a good heart (as if that needed to be said). But he prefers good-thinking, good-acting people. Everyone has a right to a home. But if they don’t behave, even the best of homes will turn to a dunghill. That’s the natural order of cursability.

So he gave the Israelites—pardon the expression—hell for their bad behavior. Flying poisonous snakes, for example. But, and this is an important counterweight, he gave them a way to get healed from the snakebites. (More about that later.)

But these days, God’s had it. How many hundreds of years of bitterness and snotty pseudo-atheism can a God take?

For all I know, I told them, after all our years in the wilderness, your old friends are dead anyway.

I kept it up:

You’re oh, so quick at finding fault and disobeying Dad. And God is usually the furthest thing from your minds. You’re basically emotionally numb from assorted cravings and you couldn’t feel divinity in your hearts if it was a flying snake biting them.

But all your sensory pleasures will one day rot away because God runs the universe not for you but for his own needs and wishes. So, you may be the older brothers, but, if I may say so: grow up. I may seem weak to you, but I’m just drained because of the passion I feel for God and his perspective.

End of sermon.

In response, my brothers had the bright idea of throwing me in the ocean so I could be my own boat. My rejoinder: I told them God would smack them deaf and wrench their brains in a thousand ways if they did it. Lay off Dad and lay off me. I’m building a boat. And it goes without saying that if God told me to do that, He’ll make sure I can.

This whole back and forth, I should add, went on for hours. I think I wore them out because they got quiet, look withered as the scrub brush we’d been stumbling through for years. God did smack them down, as I’d said he would.

I stretched my hand out toward them, not sure what effect that might have. But it seemed very patriarchal at the time. They shook a little, like weeds. Then they said, “Okay, Nephi, we felt that. You’ve got something and we can’t chalk it up to charisma, because you obviously don’t have that.” They bowed down, which was hard for me to take seriously after all that had gone on between us. I told them to get up then bow down again to God. After that, I said, try to honor your father and mother a bit, and you’ll live a long life, relatively pain-free.