Zeniff and “The Ruler”
Closing his eyes and wincing slightly in an expression of earnest yearning, my Sociology professor confessed: “I want to feel what a Buddhist feels when she is prostrating herself in front of the Buddha. She has something I don’t, and I want that connection. I want to be her in that moment.”
His statement to a group of students on this BYU study abroad trip in Thailand drew mixed reviews. For some, this prompted an anxious phone call back to parents regarding this professor’s progressive views and suspect religious devotion. Others, already tired and skeptical of religious orthodoxy, welcomed the fresh thinking and used it as additional fuel to further distance themselves from dogma and narrowmindedness. My struggle was not so much with the professor’s sentiments as it was with the seemingly binary options of how to respond to his spiritual exploration – the choice to either a) resist what is uncomfortably foreign and instead put energy into defending order and reclaiming stability or to b) single-mindedly embrace the new, abandoning passé tradition as you ascend to greater heights, turning your nose at the provincials below.
Scenes and tensions like these played on repeat throughout my time in a divinity school graduate program, and I have continued to see and experience them throughout my life. Along that journey, I’ve searched for the wisdom and the language to help better chart a course through the stages of faith development, especially in moments of sudden exposure to new questions and information. While the character of Zeniff and his experiences with “the ruler” are a relatively obscure part of The Book of Mormon, I believe they may provide a model for how to navigate this type of development more productively. Zeniff’s story is a case study regarding the significant challenges and opportunities inherent in navigating development and confronting polarities. And the lessons taught here seem to be particularly applicable to those moments where we’re suddenly jolted from our comfortable lanes and exposed to perspectives, cultures, orientations, beliefs, etc., that vary from the clean, straight lines that have heretofore been helpful in forming boundaries in our lives.
The story is positioned near the midpoint of Book of Mormon history, around 400 years after the hard separation between Nephi and Laman. At this point in the narrative there appears to be both clearly defined lines between Nephites and Lamanites but also a growing interest among at least some Nephites to explore their pre-division heritage. Within this context, the essence of the story centers around Zeniff being asked to spy on the Lamanites, with the stated purpose of helping the Nephite army ultimately “come upon them and destroy them.”1 But while on this errand, Zeniff comes across enough compelling information to convince him he should propose an alternate plan to leadership – making a treaty. His request to the ruler is met with hostility, which eventually turns to combat and killing, as “father fought against father, and brother against brother, until the greater number of [their] army was destroyed.”2 Despite these setbacks, Zeniff remains determined to inherit the land of his fathers, and after pressing through additional adversity, is successful in accomplishing his goal through the means of a Lamanite alliance.
To try to make meaning of what transpired between Zeniff and the ruler, we are forced to consider details we know from the few verses we do have and to then make assumptions to fill in the gaps. One helpful way to liken and make meaning from this story is to focus on the attributes of the two main characters and the nature of their engagement. These two characters represent polarities fixed against one another: we gather from context that Zeniff may be an elite, educated, and openminded emissary3; and his foil, the “ruler,” may feel bound by duty and intent on preserving institutional stability.
As far as we can tell from the text, the impetus for Zeniff being compelled to buck tradition seems to be his being exposed to “that which was good”4 among the Lamanites. This discovery had to have caught him off guard. As previous generations had described the Lamanites as being “evil…wild…ferocious…blood-thirsty…full of idolatry and filthiness,”5 it is likely that since his birth, Zeniff had held a similar picture of the Lamanites in his mind. In Nephite classrooms, conversations, and cultural norms, clear lines of division would have been drawn to keep him safe and to serve as a point of contrast. But, acting in authenticity, Zeniff could not outright reject the good he saw. What he observed challenged his paradigm and – perhaps emboldened by his social status and education6 – prompted him to courageously question. Was the order to destroy this people not a little extreme? And was it really necessary to send me as a spy, reinforcing from the get-go my superiority and their deviance?
In the other corner stands the ruler – a man known for being admirably “strong and mighty” but who also had a reputation for being “stiffnecked.”7 Adding to these polarizing attributes of strength and pride, Zeniff described the ruler – perhaps with an element of typecasting bias – as being “austere and bloodthirsty.”8 But that austerity or stern stance, while off-putting and likely extreme, does not seem to be completely unfounded – there was at least some data to support his position. Prophetic counsel and stern warnings had guided those who’d intentionally separated themselves from the Lamanites.9 And up to this point, the Nephites – despite significant effort and creativity – had been unsuccessful in their attempts to reclaim the Lamanites. The Lamanites persisted in hatred and war and served as a perennial threat to destroy.10
Yes, there was virtue in Zeniff seeing the good. The good was likely objectively just so. And it took admirable courage for Zeniff to identify and embrace it. His own development would have been stunted had he failed to do so. But as he came to realize later in life in through honest self-reflection, Zeniff’s zeal,11 and perhaps even arrogance, blinded him from having a balanced perspective of who the Lamanites were and of the good that came from his own faith tradition. That zeal may have also prevented him from achieving a best alternative to a negotiated agreement with his companions. While the good he saw among the Lamanites was undeniable, experience and exposure would later allow him to move beyond his initial exuberance and naïveté to form a more objective point of view. Descriptions of Lamanites being lazy, idle, wild, ferocious, wroth, hardhearted, cunning, liars, and ironically, “blood-thirsty” were slower in coming and not Zeniff’s initial observation.12
Zeniff’s status and knowledge were his strength and his downfall – they uniquely qualified him for certain tasks but may have also produced a sense of superiority over and inflexibility towards his peers who did not share his same perspective. As Hugh Nibley noted, “knowledge can be heady stuff. It easily leads to an excess of zeal – to illusions of grandeur and a desire to impress others and achieve eminence.”13 In this sense, Zeniff’s challenge seems to be that he combatted the dogma he observed (i.e seemingly harsh, racist conceptions of Lamanites) with his own similarly dogmatic approach (i.e. make a treaty, inherit the land, or die trying). We may be subject to this same temptation as we excitedly digest new information and are exposed to traditions that challenge what we’ve known. This zeal can even cause us to look down in embarrassment on and distance ourselves from those with whom we once warmly associated.
But while Zeniff’s flaws protrude clearly enough for us to see, there are just as many pitfalls and snares on the side of the ruler. Yes, it was and is honorable to stay grounded in prophetic parameters and to preserve tradition. And while carrying out duty may be unfashionable, it’s also central to a life of holiness and peace. And yet one senses in him a kind of ugly insecurity. A feeling that to be confident in my own tradition, I need to point out the flaws in another. As Joseph Smith once warned, “the devil flatters us that we are doing very well when we are feeding on the faults of others.”14 While the ruler may have been justified in questioning Zeniff’s counter proposal, was the only course of option to kill him? This reaction feels like a kind of command-and-control dogmatism that treats a “rational, questioning mind as a form of evil.”15 It seeks to immediately shut down concepts that aren’t neatly labeled as being institution-sponsored—an approach that is off-putting and can easily drive people away. As Joseph Smith relatedly lamented, “I have tried for a number of years to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God; but we frequently see some of them…fly to pieces like glass as soon as anything comes that is contrary to their traditions: they cannot stand the fire at all.”16 If we’re in a position of authority—as parents, leaders, or advisors—we must do better. We must demonstrate more humble open-mindedness and inclusivity, modeling how a unification of polarities actually makes us stronger.
The tragedy of this story then is not in either side having an untenable position. It is in the inability of these central characters to come to a common ground, to inhabit each other’s perspectives, and to reimagine or reconstruct alternatives to their paradigms. Their respective but polarizing flaws drove both Zeniff and the ruler to lead with contention instead of reconciliation—the ruler “caused contention among” the people,17 and Zeniff “contended with [his] brethren.”18 Seen through this framing, both sides were partly wrong, or at least incomplete, in where they independently stood. However, it cheapens things and misses the point to suggest they simply needed to be a bit more tolerant. What was needed, and perhaps what was possible, was and is more than that. Polarities are ultimately “compound in one,”19 and, as Thomas McConkie has noted, these polarities, as opposites, actually “need one another to be one and to be whole.” Zeniff and the ruler, then, held a synergistic potential together that they could not understand. That is the tragedy. Had they grasped it, they could have become one and realized a better version of themselves.
T.S. Eliott spoke of returning from our exploring to “arrive at where we started and know the place for the first time.”20 Returning to my professor, what I believe he was trying to do was to make an intentional metaphorical journey to the outermost boundary away from his spiritual home. We can’t grow if we never take that journey. But it’s also perilous to stay out on the outer rim and disregard our point of origin. Thankfully, choosing between those binaries is not our only option. As we grow and develop from stage to stage, coming into contact with virtuous—but occasionally opposing—principles, those views and principles can ultimately be enveloped within each other, complementing each other and eventually fusing into something new.21 Something better. We can preserve where we’ve been and embrace what is new. And by so doing we can better appreciate both.
There is a mystery here that I believe is key to both our personal development and to our unity as a people. It will never be possible for us “lay hold upon every good thing”22 if we cannot be, in some ways, both Zeniff and the ruler. Nor can we progress if don’t include and ultimately embrace both the Zeniffs and the rulers into our community. But if we have the courage to intentionally force these polarities to coexist and build upon each other, we can truly ascend, truly develop, into a unique and beautiful “harmony divine.”23
Allen Stoddard is a husband, father of four boys, and disciple of Christ. He helps sell shoes and shirts by day, living in Portland, OR.
Art by Helen Frankenthaler
Mosiah 9:1
Mosiah 9:2
See Daniel L. Belnap, “The Abinadi Narrative, Redemption, and the Struggle of Nephite Identity,” in Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise, ed. Shon D. Hopkin (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018), 27–66, for the suggestion of Zeniff as a colonist who was more than an average Nephite and likely a member of “an elite, perhaps even a royal, class”
Mosiah 9:1
Enos 1:20
Note that amongst the very sparse details Zeniff gives about himself, he calls out that he was “taught in all the language of the Nephites,” and that he had “a knowledge of the land of Nephi” (see Mosiah 9:1, emphasis added)
Omni 1:28
Mosiah 9:3
See 2 Nephi 5:5-6 and Omni 1:12-13 – the warnings to leave the land of Nephi were divinely inspired, and those who fled were those who believed in revelation, obeyed commandments, and chose to follow prophets
See Jacob 7:24 and Enos 1:20
Mosiah 9:3
See Mosiah 9:12 and Mosiah 10:12-18
Hugh Nibley, “Zeal Without Knowledge,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 11:2 (Summer 1978): 101-112
Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith History, 1838–1856, vol. C-1, addenda, created 18 Oct.–ca. 20 Nov. 1854
Thomas Wirthlin McConkie, Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis: A Simple Developmental Map, 2nd ed (2015), p.58.
Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 6:184–85; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on Jan. 21, 1844, in Nauvoo, Illinois; reported by Wilford Woodruff
Omni 1:28, emphasis added
Mosiah 9:2, emphasis added
2 Nephi 2:11
T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.
Thomas Wirthlin McConkie, Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis: A Simple Developmental Map, 2nd ed (2015), p.34.
Moroni 7:25
Eliza R. Snow, “How Great the Wisdom and The Love,” Hymns, 1985, no. 195
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