The Simpleness of the Way

When the Lord needed to chastise the people of Israel after their rebelliousness as they were in the wilderness, He “sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much of Israel died.”  But He didn’t just send the curse, for He also prepared a way for their deliverance.  He told Moses, “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, and that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live” (Numbers 21:6-8).  We don’t get many more details than this in the Old Testament, but Nephi told us how some of the people responded to this: “After they were bitten he prepared a way that they might be healed; and the labor which they had to perform was to look; and because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished” (1 Nephi 17:41).  Apparently this remedy from the Lord was refused by many because it was such an easy thing to do.  Alma used this as a lesson to his son Helaman as well: “Do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way; for so was it with our fathers; for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live; even so it is with us” (Alma 37:46).  I’ve thought about this story a lot and it has seemed incredible that some of the people really wouldn’t look—all they had to do was simply try it; it’s not like looking was some big risk that things might get worse if looking didn’t heal them.  Could they really have been that stubborn? What feeling was so powerful inside of them that they would refuse to look even after they had seen miracles like the parting of the Red Sea? 

                I’m writing about this scripture story because of a little battle that I had with my four-year old son tonight.  We told him that he had to eat at least a little bit of his rice that was served for dinner before he could supplement it with cereal as he always wants to do.  He didn’t like that and decided to go to war to get his cereal without eating his rice.  He firmly declared from the outset that he would never eat the rice.  I finally even compromised to just two bites of rice and the cereal would be his.  He finally ate one bite and then vehemently refused to eat the second one.  But he also just as vehemently pleaded for cereal.  I explained (about 100 times) that if he would simply eat his one bite of rice then the bowl of cereal was his.  And yet no matter what technique of persuasion about the simpleness of the way that I tried, it was to no avail.  He simply refused to back down from his position that he would get cereal without eating the rice.  I thought of the story of these Israelites at some point during this hour-long kitchen ordeal and realized it was really the same thing.  My son could have what he wanted by performing a very simple action, but he would not because it would mean that he would be admitting that he was wrong about not eating the rice.  I have to think that it was likewise the pride and stubbornness of these Israelites that caused some of them to refuse to look.  Looking meant admitting that they needed God to help them; it meant that they were not in control of their own situation; it meant that they were wrong to have spoken “against God, and against Moses” and against the manna that they had received (Numbers 21:5).  And their hearts were too hard to admit that. 

                But before I spend too much time judging the Israelites or my son for that matter, I wonder if sometimes God doesn’t feel that way about me.  He invites me to follow simple commandments and promises blessings, but I still find excuses not to always do them.  Just as I desperately wanted my son to let go of his four-year old pride and trust me by doing what I asked, our Father in Heaven must be infinitely more desirous that we become “as a child” and “submit to all things which [He] seeth fit to inflict upon [us]” (Mosiah 3:9).  He earnestly wants to bless us, but He is bound by those laws “irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated” (D&C 130:20).