The Anti Nephi Lehis

If sin were not bad, then we wouldn’t have a reason to avoid it.
And yes, sometimes the grace of Christ immediately heals our wounds, physical and spiritual. There are examples of instant healing, or instantaneous conversion. But the other 99.999% of the time, it is slow gradual growth and healing.

And what is it healing from? Actual wounds and injuries. Make no mistake about it.

But be humble. None of us are getting through this without some wounds and injuries.

Anti Nephi Lehis

I always read that as the Lehites that were not from Nephi. They no longer want to claim their rebellious ancestor Laman, but they also do not/cannot want to claim Nephi.

In Webster’s 1828 dictionary “anti” is defined as “A preposition signifying against, opposite, contrary, or in place of.” I’m supposing that last one, “in place of,” might be close to what the Lamanite converts were intending by the word.

It’s kind of like how some anti-Christs are designated as such because they’re directly opposed to Christ (the ones in the Book of Mormon were all like that), while other anti-Christs are called that because they’re trying to pass themselves off as Christ despite being imposters (which tends to be closer to what the New Testament writers were getting at).

Regarding the main point of the entry, I’m reminded of a story President Eyring told in conference about a man who had once been a district missionary companion of his. The man had a pretty rough past that included a bitter divorce and losing his children, along with losing an eye in an accident, before coming back to the Church when he discovered a copy of the Book of Mormon in the bottom of a trunk. Brother Eyring described one time when he and the man were teaching together:

“I asked the people we were teaching, as I testified of the power of the Savior’s Atonement, to look at him. He had been washed clean and given a new heart, and I knew they would see that in his face. I told the people that what they saw was evidence that the Atonement of Jesus Christ could wash away all the corrosive effects of sin.

“That was the only time he ever rebuked me. He told me in the darkness outside the trailer where we had been teaching that I should have told the people that while God was able to give him a new heart, He had not been able to give him back his wife and his children and what he might have done for them. But he had not looked back in sorrow and regret for what might have been. He moved forward, lifted by faith, to what yet might be.

“One day he told me that in a dream the night before, the sight in his blind eye was restored. He realized that the dream was a glimpse of a future day, walking among loving people in the light of a glorious resurrection. Tears of joy ran down the deeply lined face of that towering, raw-boned man. He spoke to me quietly, with a radiant smile. I don’t remember what he said he saw, but I remember that his face shone with happy anticipation as he described the view. With the Lord’s help and the miracle of that book in the bottom of a trunk, it had not for him been too late nor the way too hard.”

While repentance and accepting the atonement set us in the right direction, we shouldn’t be surprised when some things, like a missing eye, aren’t set right until the resurrection.

I’ve thought of the covenant the Anti-Nephi Lehis made as something similar to a recovering addict who might take extra measures to avoid a relapse. While they had faith that God had forgiven them, the worry was that if they repeated the same wrong again they might not have the strength to repent again.

I suppose that there is not a perfect analogy of the Atonement. I have had to live with the fact that although I know I have been forgiven of serious sin, the consequences have not been removed. At times I feel great despair because of those consequences. The nail has been pulled out of the board, but the hole remains and will until the next life when all is made right. When I heard the story from President Eyring I totally understood the man.

I’d assumed the “Anti” element was a transliteration, not an English prefix. “Ani-Anti” occurs in the BoM as a place name.

I think this difficulty in explaining how (repented) sin does Not exclude us from Heaven and eternal life – and yet does make a deleterious difference to our prospects; comes from the common experience of finding that a metaphysical explanation that used-to serve us well… ceases to do so.

And we are confronted either with a need to revisit and revise our metaphysical assumptions, or else to complexify our metaphysical theories with extra ancillary assumptions that – further down the line – lead to other problems.

Thus the idea of the Atonement. For some time it sufficed as a simple explanation of what Jesus did for us, and did not often lead to perceived inconsistencies or difficult questions…

But like all metaphysical assumptions, the Atonement is necessarily (because of our small amount of time and effort very limited understanding) a simplified model of real-reality. And because (very) simplified – not wholly true.

Pushed hard enough; the centrality of the Atonement will be insufficient for all relevant purposes, and require (what amounts to) modification or replacement.

My feeling is that this time has come; and the Atonement no longer suffices as an explanation of what Jesus did for us. This is seen in the confusion it now generates, and the false conclusions it tends to lead-to.

These can be fixed, but at the price of a complexification that reduces comprehensibility and predictive value.

But such difficulties (when they don’t go away, and are increasingly difficult to ignore) may also be a signal for us to go back to our deepest (and perhaps, until now, unconscious) assumptions – and re-examine them.

With respect, Bruce, I see the problem as a misunderstanding usually perpetrated in semi bad faith by people who don’t believe in sexual morality in the first place

If we find the Atonement insufficient, perhaps we have painted Christ’s work into too narrow a corner. The ‘atonement’ is not a Platonic entity. It is merely a placeholder for what Jesus has done. What he did in Gethsemane and the Cross, but also what he continues to do today.

Regarding anti, Nibley pointed out an ancient archaic usage where it means ‘mirror image’.