The Unrighteousness that Comes of Weakness

by Greg Christiansen

They who are not chosen have sinned a very grievous sin, in that they are walking in darkness at noon-day. D&C 95:6

On June 23, 1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith stealthily slipped across the Mississippi River to avoid arrest. A few men from Nauvoo soon came after them, among whom was Reynolds Cahoon. Reynolds had with him a letter from Emma meant to persuade Joseph to come home. Reynolds and the others informed Joseph that  “the governor intended to occupy Nauvoo with troops until he and his brother Hyrum gave themselves up” (Saints: Volume 1, 541). Some of them accused Joseph of cowardice. Along those lines, Reynolds is recorded to have said, “You always said if the church would stick to you, you would stick to the church, now trouble comes [and] you are the first to run” (in Wandle Mace, Autobiography, circa 1890, 105, Church History Library, Salt Lake City).

There is an interesting hypocrisy to these men accusing Joseph of cowardice, because plainly their motivation behind convincing him to return was that they were afraid. They preferred that Joseph and Hyrum returned to submit themselves to the authorities than to put themselves in danger for Joseph’s sake. Instead of finding fault in their own lack of courage, they were finding fault with Joseph’s decision to avoid arrest. Instead of asking what they could do to help Joseph in those challenging circumstances, they were asking what Joseph could do to help them.

Joseph’s famous reply to their accusations was heartbreaking. “If my life is of no value to my friends it is of none to myself.” There is no doubt that he knew the cost of returning to Nauvoo. “Joseph then turned to Hyrum…and said, ‘brother Hyrum, you are the oldest, what shall we do?’ Hyrum said, ‘let us go back and give ourselves up, and see the thing out.’ After studying a few moments Joseph said, ‘if…you go back I shall go with you, but we shall be butchered’” (Manuscript History of the Church, vol. F-1, p. 148, josephsmithpapers.org).

While these particular Saints were not willing to risk their lives and their homes for the sake of Joseph, Joseph himself was willing to knowingly sacrifice his life for their sakes. As he would later say when he and Hyrum began their journey to Carthage, “I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer’s morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men. I shall die innocent, and it shall yet be said of me—he was murdered in cold blood” (D&C 135:4).

It is rather interesting also that as they prepared to go, he read this paragraph from Ether 12:

And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord that he would give unto the Gentiles grace, that they might have charity. And it came to pass that the Lord said unto me: If they have not charity it mattereth not unto thee, thou hast been faithful; wherefore thy garments shall be made clean. And because thou hast seen thy weakness, thou shalt be made strong, even unto the sitting down in the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my Father. And now I … bid farewell unto the Gentiles; yea, and also unto my brethren whom I love, until we shall meet before the judgment-seat of Christ, where all men shall know that my garments are not spotted with your blood.

These words of Moroni were a perfect parallel to that moment in history, as Joseph prepared to lay down his life for the sake of his friends. He had done everything in his power to bring the fullness of the Gospel to the Gentiles, and so his hands were clean of their blood. His willing sacrifice for his friends would also become the proof that he had received the gift of charity. As the Savior taught, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He gave the Saints everything, and held nothing back.

Yet Joseph’s quotation of Ether 12 communicates a possible concern he had for the state of the Gentiles. Did they have charity? Surely that was the purpose of all of Joseph’s labors, to help instill the pure love of Christ into the hearts of the people. But as Joseph confronted his impending death, it was plain that the Gentiles were yet lacking in charity. His innocent blood was soon to be shed at the hands of wicked men who were conspiring to murder him, among whom were many apostates from the Church. Obviously, those Gentiles did not have charity. Yet were they the only ones with his blood on their hands? Perhaps not, for surely the cowardice of those who loved their lives more than Joseph’s played a part in this tale, which cowardice was an indicator that the Saints also lacked in charity. After all, “perfect​ ​​​love​ ​​​casteth out​ all fear” (Moroni 8:16).

You see, unrighteousness is not brought about only by those who “labor in sin” (Jacob 2:5) or who have “studied iniquity” (Mosiah 13:11), or who purposefully seek to do the devil’s work; but it is also brought about because of weakness. One symptom of this weakness is fear, which fear has place in us because we lack in charity, for charity “seeketh not her own” (Moroni 7:45). Christ had this perfect love, and apparently so did Joseph and Hyrum. But who else among the Saints of Nauvoo could say the same? Rather, enough of them were lacking enough in this attribute of charity that their fear for their own lives played its part in the loss of one of the greatest prophets who had ever lived.

Yet we point this out not in a spirit of judgment, having no ability to see into their hearts and not having walked in their shoes. After all, perhaps they did not realize the gravity of the situation, assuming that the Lord would protect Joseph from the mob, even if they did not believe that the Lord would protect them from those same enemies. Perhaps they ignorantly believed that their choices had no bearing on whether Joseph lived or died, thinking the Lord would protect Joseph even if his own friends would not do what they could to help the Lord protect him. After all, while it is plain that Joseph had a clear understanding of what Carthage meant for him, it stands to reason that those of his friends who consented to send him there did not share that same clarity of vision. Joseph could see, yet they were blind.

And here we make our next point. Just as unrighteousness can sometimes come about because good men lack courage, being governed by their fears rather than by principles, unrighteousness is also often the result of ignorance. Where we lack in knowledge and understanding, we are prone to error, not because we are seeking to do wickedly, but because our minds are too dark to perceive the righteous course. For example, surely the Saints would have not pleaded for Joseph to turn himself in if they had understood that it would mean his death.

How often is this the case, where good men act wrongly because they do not understand the situation, or because they lack in their knowledge and understanding of truth? We need only look at Saul of Tarsis, who persecuted the early Christians because of his zealousness for the Law of Moses. He did great and terrible wrongs in the name of a God that he did not know as well as he thought he did. Yet this was not because he was an evil man, but it was because of his great ignorance, which was perhaps compounded by the pride of thinking he knew and understood more than he really did.

Indeed, personal pride most certainly compounded the situation, which becomes evident when we contrast Saul’s attitude toward the Christians with the attitude of Gamaliel, who was a Pharisee and a member of the council, who was essentially in the same situation as Saul. Rather than persecuting Christians as Saul did, Gamaliel instead was more humble in his approach, acknowledging the possibility that Peter and the apostles of Christ perhaps knew and understood something that he didn’t. To the council he said, “Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God” (Acts 5:38-39). 

In other words, both Saul and Gamaliel were ignorant concerning the truth of Christ’s Gospel, yet because Gamaliel approached the situation with humility, he was empowered to speak words of wisdom and righteousness. At the same time, because Saul regarded the Christian dilemma from a more prideful vantage point, convinced that the Pharisees were right and the Christians were wrong, he brought about great unrighteousness which culminated in the martyrdom of Stephen. Then came the day that the Lord appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus, which shocking experience prompted him towards humility.

Ultimately, we should acknowledge that it is not enough for us to be content to be generally good people with good intentions. We must be attentive to an Achilles heel which resides in all of us, lest it overcome us in the key moments of our lives, the Achilles heel of fear and ignorance. Surely, the degree of unrighteousness brought about in this world by fearful and ignorant people is tremendous, though those people might have been the best of neighbors had they not been confronted by difficult circumstances.

After all, there were many in Hitler’s Germany who committed atrocities they would never have considered were circumstances different. We might ask what was more abundant in the Germany of that day? Ignorance? Cowardice? Or plain black evil? That is perhaps an impossible question to answer, but one well worth pondering, because we can see history beginning to repeat itself once again. Will we be complicit in a day of wickedness? Will we deliver up our friends to the authorities, for fear of our own lives?

Consider the role of fear in Hitler’s Germany, and the enemy it was to righteousness. Consider the role of ignorance in that same society, which wore the guise of science and knowledge. Many of the atrocities of Hitler’s day were justified by the increasingly popular study of eugenics, which made a scientific argument that mankind was essentially breeding criminals and degenerates by violating Darwin’s theory of natural selection in our modern practice of medicine. Such ideas had emerged in Great Britain, and become prominent in both America and Europe. As a result of these scientific ideas, the genocide of “lesser humans” could be justified as being in the best interest of society, nobly paving the way for a brighter future.

Truly, the Holocaust and similar social movements should teach us the great ignorance to be found in scientific beliefs which are completely devoid of moral accountability. While science would convince us that the ends justify the means, divine truth would inform us that it does not only matter where we go, but it also matters how we get there. Righteousness exists in a delicate balance, where if any one thing is taken too far then something good can quickly be twisted into something evil. 

Many of us believe that there are even darker days ahead of us than what we are now experiencing in the world. Do we expect to find salvation in those dark times, individually and as a nation? Well, as Joseph Smith said, “It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance” (D&C 131:6). We must not be content with our current understanding of truth, if we wish to navigate turbulent times as best as we can. We must continually be increasing in the light, if we wish for our eyes to penetrate the darkness. We must continually acknowledge that we do not yet understand all things. How often is persecution brought about by those who believe they are the ones in the right, who are blind to their own ignorance, having been convinced by scientific arguments that do not account for divine principles, or holding too tightly to one good principle at the expense of another, or simply being blinded by false traditions? How often has evil been done in the name of God, or in the name of good?

Neither can we be ruled by fear, if we wish to do what is right in a day where doing what is right may come with a heavy cost. Ignorance and cowardice are indeed just two more reasons we find unrighteousness among otherwise good people. Though we have the best of intentions, both of those things will cause us to err. 

After all, if Joseph’s friends erred in their day because of fear and because they could not see that they were counseling Joseph into folly, how much more prone to error might we be, as most if not all of us have been far less tried by our circumstances than the early Saints of Nauvoo, who by that time had suffered all manner of persecution for the sake of their beliefs. We certainly can not fault them one iota, yet we can learn a lesson from what they experienced. Can we imagine the remorse of those who convinced Joseph and Hyrum to surrender to the authorities, once news broke of their martyrdom? Surely, they wished they had not been blinded by their weakness to deliver him to such an end, and had not given in so much to their fears. Surely, their blunder was sufficient to bring them into the depths of humility.

Hopefully, we too are regularly humbled by our failings, as that is the perfect state to be in if we want to grow. Hopefully, we are humble enough to recognize our failings and our weakness and our ignorance. Coincidentally, it was in that same discourse in Ether 12 which Joseph Smith quoted before going to Carthage, where Moroni also delivered these more famous words given him by the Lord: “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (Ether 12:27).

In summary, we truly see much unrighteousness in this world because of weakness, and not just because of more intentional wickedness. For example, people can so often be motivated by their fears. Yet love is the remedy for fear, which love for God and for our fellow men would move us to courage rather than cowardice, that we might act rightly in the face of fear though our righteousness may come with a heavy cost. At the same time, there is also much unrighteousness in this world because we lack in knowledge and understanding. As this will always be the case until we have a perfect knowledge of all things, the remedy for the unrighteousness born of ignorance is humility, in addition of course to regular study, fasting, and mighty prayer. Surely, God is capable of guiding and teaching the meek and the humble things of the earth, whilst the proud and arrogant must continue to stumble in their blindness, to bring about all manner of wrongs in the name of good.

May we, the blundering fools of humanity, humble ourselves sufficiently for our eyes to penetrate the darkness, and for the Lord to be enabled to fill our bowels with sufficient charity to see us through days of turmoil and to bless us in times of peace.