Deuteronomy 6; 8; 11; 32

If you look at these chapters from the point of view of equity and social justice, they are difficult: Israel is about to come in and take over a country that belongs to someone else. (The actual military campaign is in the following lesson, “Be Strong and of a Good Courage.”) These chapters contain counsel from God to Moses about what is expected from Israel and what will happen if Israel does not live up to its covenants. The chapters raise important issues with obvious parallels to what happened in the Americas when the Europeans began colonizing.

That by itself is a bigger, and more difficult, discussion than is appropriate here. You might consider reading Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth for an interesting and insightful analysis of the effect of colonization on an already occupied land. But that issue is not the only one worth discussing in this reading assignment.

In these chapters, remembering God is placed in the context of the captivity in Egypt and 40 years of wandering in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 6 and 8). Both periods taught the absolute necessity of dependence on, and gratitude to, God. Is that necessity something that is irrelevant to the pursuit of equity and social justice?

I don’t think so.

One of the great problems of our time is assuming that other people are wiser, kinder, and more than they actually are. We deify our celebrities and then savage them when they disappoint us. I think much the same thing can also happen on the local level. As a result, we can be guilty of naiveté and poor judgment in our relationships with other people.

When I was growing up, I had a Sunday School teacher who was teaching us about the Old Testament. I thought that he must certainly know everything there was to know about Hebrew, Old Testament history, and every ancient culture, and I asked my questions accordingly. After I grew up, he told me I used to terrify him because of the questions I asked. In his particular case, he did a good job of answering my questions in such a way that I never realized the burden I was placing on him. However, not everyone has such a happy ending. A few hours on the Internet, or a few years of living in a neighborhood, make it amply clear that many people have been deeply hurt by other people to such an extent that it does affect their religious decisions and it does damage the life of the community. It is easy to assume that we ourselves could never possibly be hurt to that extent, and that we would never let other people’s bad behavior be that important to us, but the evidence suggests a greater vulnerability than we might suspect. This is especially true if the bad behavior involves a church leader.

In 2 Nephi 4, Nephi writes at length about the contrast between his weakness and God’s strength, and in verse 34 talks specifically about not putting his “trust in the arm of flesh.” The problem is, when we do assume that others are better than they are, and then at some point are betrayed by that assumption, the resulting pain is devastating. It becomes difficult or impossible to repair the relationships involved because not only have we overestimated the capacity of others, making us likelier to underestimate their capacity in the future, but we have added our own pain into the problem.

The only (deceptively simple) solution I see for this is to (1) Worship God and teach our children to worship God, as discussed in Deuteronomy 6, and (2) Remember the generosity and kindness of God in our own lives… precisely as Moses instructed the children of Israel.

This is too lengthy a topic to do justice to in just a few words, and I do not intend to trivialize anyone’s anguish over injustice. But any search for equity and social justice has to begin with seeing other people realistically as they are, no better and no worse, and placing your complete trust in God. For more information on how you can choose to view your interactions with other people, I recommend a secular book called Crucial Confrontations, written by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzer. Another useful book to consider was written by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, and is called Anger.


Sunday School Notebook -May 2006 - Susan Morgan