Part One: Invite Sharing Part Two: Teach the Doctrine

Come Follow Me 2020, LDS Sunday School Lesson provided by The Practical Dreamers For those wishing to better understand these chapters, I strongly recommend Elder David A. Bednar’s October 2011 Conference talk, “Lehi’s Dream: Holding Fast to the Rod.” I draw on concepts from his talk several times in the lesson below. Part One: Invite Sharing The tree of life vision is perhaps one of the most familiar stories in the entire Book of Mormon. And I think we can sometimes have very clear ideas about what the different symbols mean, and what lessons we are supposed to get from these chapters. As such, lessons like this can seem like an exercise in repetition – valuable to reiterate what we know but nothing too surprising. I hope today we can move beyond that a bit, and find something perhaps a bit new and thought-provoking in this wonderful vision. With that in mind… Question: What stood out to you while reading the tree of life vision this week? Question: What challenged you to do better? Question: What from these chapters needed clarification? Part Two: Teach the Doctrine 2.1: First of all, it’s visions not vision So we sometimes call this section of the Book of Mormon the “tree of life vision” but actually as we all know it’s two different visions. Lehi has a vision in chapter 8 which he shares with his family, prompting Nephi to pray about it (in 1 Nephi 10), and then Nephi receives a vision/revelation reiterating but also clarifying and expanding on what his father saw (1 Nephi 11-14). We will come back to this, and a subtle but important difference between the two, later in the lesson if we have time. For now, we’ll use the singular vision even though we know we’re talking about visions, since there are really best thought about in tandem. 2.2: The Path and the Building We’re familiar with the tree (the love of God/Jesus Christ), the fruit (the gospel/blessings of the gospel), the rod of iron (the word of God), the mists of darkness (temptations, 1 Nephi 12:17) and the great and spacious building (‘the world’). I want to delve a bit more into the great and spacious building. Sometimes we think of Lehi’s dream as being primarily about how Church members (people on the path) have to be wary of the mocking of “the world”/great and spacious building so they don’t fall away from the gospel. We don’t think of ourselves as in the great and spacious building – it’s those baddies out “in the world”, it’s not me. Question: Where did the people in the great and spacious building, who are mocking the people at the tree, come from in the first place? To answer that, let’s note that we start the dream with “numberless concourses of people, many of whom were pressing forward, that they might obtain the path which led unto the tree” (1 Nephi 8:21). Question: What does this imply about most human beings? It’s actually a really optimistic commentary on humanity. It says that huge groups of people – maybe even most people – are, at least to start out, trying to find God. They want to find the Path. We’re not delinquents that only search for God when He forces us to – we’re naturally drawn to the Light. So what happens? These “numberless” people soon divide into four groups: Group 1: 1 Nephi 8:21-23 – Starts on the path, the mists arise, they fall away. Group 2: 1 Nephi 8:24-28 – Goes along path with the rod of iron, partakes of the fruit, but falls away when they are mocked by the people in the great and spacious building. Group 3: 1 Nephi 8:30 – Press forward, holds fast to the rod, partakes, does not fall away. Group 4: 1 Nephi 8:31-33. Fourth group. Let’s read about this one. Can someone please read 8:31-33? Question: What do you notice about the desires of the fourth group? Right. They either stop (or never started) wanting to find God as their highest goal. Maybe they don’t even realize it. But they set their hearts on that building – which Nephi tells us was the “pride of the world” (1 Nephi 11:36). They are “feeling their way towards the great and spacious building.” And clearly some of them – and it looks like some of Group 1 and Group 2 – eventually get to that goal. “And great was the multitude that did enter that strange building.” So, in other words, where did the people in the building come from? They’re us! Or rather, they’re human beings who started out either trying to find the path, or at least in the same starting place as those trying to find the path – and then they ended up in this building, mocking people who are finding Christ. So we tend to think of this vision through the lens of a Christ’s Church/the world dichotomy, but we might better think of this as a story about the diverse way that human beings – including you and me – can end up – and that one of the options is we get so far off base we end up actively working against Christ. Our actions can take us places we didn’t expect. With that in mind… Question: Why might people in Group 4 have TRIED to find the great and spacious building? When there was clearly a beautiful tree everyone could see? Although we are definitely not all born into situations where the gospel is available, we are all born as human beings with the light of Christ that drives most of us (according to this vision) to seek God, to seek light, to seek goodness. So what’s up with these people – apparently lots - who seem to go against their own inner light and seek that big building. Let’s read 1 Nephi 8:26-27. Why might the building have been appealing? The building was high in the air. We often think of this as meaning the building is foundationless – and it is – but it also means there’s a hierarchy here. The building has this prestige, this status in the world. In fact, Nephi tells us it’s the “pride of the world” in 1 Nephi 11. They are also wealthy. They have a “manner of dress [that] was exceedingly fine.” Question: Why do we seek after wealth and status? What is that about us? I think Nephi is right to call this building of status and wealth “pride” and I think it’s worth noting that President Benson taught us that pride is really enmity with other human beings, and at the risk of sounding like Jedi master Yoda (not adorable Baby Yoda, but his geriatric possible relative) that this enmity, this contention or division with other humans, is very often rooted in our fear. We want to be safe, we want to be secure, and we seek that with status and wealth and social networks. We think if we can accumulate enough stuff, status, and social networks we’ll be safe, when really what we need is the Savior. Question: Why might seeking wealth and status as ends to themselves land us in the great and spacious building? So having wealth is not on its own evil – and in fact we can definitely turn around and use that to help others, so it can be helpful. Also, most of those reading this lesson plan by virtue of where they live and having a computer are “wealthy” compared to large portions of the human population. So this is not some anti-money diatribe. In fact, it would appear that Lehi was quite wealthy. However, the scriptures across the standard works do make it very clear that seeking wealth, and particularly seeking wealth as an end to itself, will very quickly take you down spiritual paths you don’t want to go (not to mention the effects it will have on human beings, which the scriptures also condemn). Question: How do we know wealthy Lehi did not have wealth as his end goal? He gave it all up when God asked him to, fleeing Jerusalem. By the way, it’s notable that the dream does not just say the people in the great building have wealth, but that they had these outward signs of wealth in their fancy clothing. The Book of Mormon will bring up this idea again and again – with fine clothing being basically a synonym for wealth inequality and pride. That’s probably partly because, in this case, it’s a dream so we need something visual to tell us fast that they’re rich. But I think it’s also significant that in the Book of Mormon clothing is so often the sign of wealthiness because it implies people using their wealth intentionally to show off to others, and that very quickly leads to “I’m better than you.” And this is very often Christian Nephites doing this to other Christian Nephites, as we will see later. Question: Are we immune to this in the Church? Do we ever have status hierarchies in our branches, wards, stakes? Question: Why do we try to show off? Question: Do we do this showing off thing and seeking after the world thing even if we’re not seeking for or attaining wealth? Definitely. Other things can serve as fine substitutes for fine clothing if we’re not wealth-inclined.

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