13 And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.
Lehi now takes us through a string of if/then arguments in
logic. The first statement builds on verse 12, because in order for justice to
exist there has to be a law to break. In the sports analogy I made at the end
of verse 12, you cannot determine winners or losers if there is no way to keep score.
Laws are the criteria of “keeping score” in this life. So if there is no law to
break, nobody can do anything wrong (sin). That seems self-evident. It follows
that if we can’t do anything wrong (sin), or if we have no law to break, the
opposite is also true, and we have no law to keep either. There is no way to
keep score, or determine who is righteous and who is wicked. So since you can’t
determine, then the only alternative is that nobody is either righteous or
wicked. Humans gain much satisfaction and happiness from doing things right,
and from doing right things. If you take that possibility away, then it follows
that you take away the happiness that comes with “rightness,” or righteousness.
Of course, the opposite must also be true logically. If there is no way of
being rewarded with happiness for doing righteous things, there can be no way
of penalizing wickedness with misery. So no reward = no punishment. No
happiness = no misery. As stated in verse 12, if there is no chance for success
(or failure) there is no purpose to our existence. In fact, God’s purpose goes
away as well, so He ceases to be God (see Alma 42: 13). If we have no God with
authority and power to create, then we don’t get created, and neither does the
earth. In fact, without God, who has power and authority to create, nothing gets created, and “all things
must have vanished away.”
This brings up the question, “How did God get to be God in
the first place?” Of course, I don’t know the process, but I can use my
imagination, based on things I know. One thing I do not know is whether there
even was a beginning or not. The
concept of eternity says there was no beginning and there will be no end. Time
is apparently a mortal measurement and doesn’t really apply to the eternal
state (see Alma 40: 8; D&C 84: 100—time is not the subject of these verses,
but we get clues in passing about time). Since I cannot even imagine a thing or
state or condition existing without it being in a different state first, the
best I can do is say that everything that is not a raw material building block
used to be something else, or in a different condition. Intelligence is
apparently one of those foundational building blocks that is eternal and cannot
be created (see D&C 93: 28–29). By the way, this verse refers to “the
beginning” and the fact that intelligence cannot be created, which means there
is no beginning. So it seems to me that matter must be the most basic of
building blocks or elements, and cannot be created. There are different levels
or classes of matter (see D&C 131: 7–8). Intelligence must be a kind of
matter, or something (energy maybe?) that can be organized into spirit. Maybe
intelligence is a kind of self-aware matter, and just as the spirit is what
animates the mortal body, maybe intelligence animates the spirit. After all,
the scriptures say that intelligence cannot be created, but we know that God is
the creator of our spirits (see Moses 6: 36). Intelligence can apparently be
acquired or lost, based on principles of obedience to some eternal law (such as
the law of justice, maybe?). D&C 93: 36–39 tells us that, “the glory of God
is intelligence, or, in other word, light and truth.” I take that to mean that
the magnificence of God is intelligence, light, and truth. In verse 39 of this
reference we learn that intelligence can be lost, or taken away, through
disobedience. So, since everything has its opposite, if intelligence can be
lost, it can be gained. If it can be taken away by disobedience, it can be
given through obedience. Because there are different levels of obedience there
must be different levels of intelligence. In fact, this is what the Lord taught
Abraham, as recorded in Abraham 3: 18–23. One of the things I take from those
verses is that it’s possible that what makes God God is His greater
intelligence. Either He’s God because of His intelligence, or He is intelligent
because He is God. I suspect the former, because it fits with everything else
that I think I understand about God. I have discussed at length in another
entry how Heavenly Father is bound to keep the Law of Justice, or He ceases to
be God. If He is more intelligent than all other spirits, and if this is the
source of His power and authority, and if intelligence can be taken away by
disobedience, then disobedience, by reducing Heavenly Father’s intelligence,
would make his intelligence on par with others, and He would cease being “more
intelligent than they all” (Abraham 3: 19). That would result in Him ceasing to
be God due to the fact that His intelligence would be no longer superior. So if
all this speculation is true, God became God by gaining superior or more
intelligence through obedience. And since everything has its opposite, as Lehi
taught in verse 11 of this chapter, then loss of intelligence through disobedience
would result in Him ceasing to be God. So, as Lehi rounds out this argument, he
concludes that if there was nobody intelligent enough to become God, there
would be nobody to organize matter into the earth, or even in us. We would
still be unorganized intelligence.
- Romans 4: 15
- Romans 5: 13
- 2 Nephi 9: 25
- 2 Nephi 28: 22
- Alma 41: 10
- Alma 42: 13
