Episode 21 // Choosing Peaceful Leadership: Lessons from The Book of Mormon for Election Season

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In this special episode of the Proclaim Peace Podcast, hosts Jennifer Thomas and Patrick Mason discuss what The Book of Mormon teaches us about choosing peaceful leadership in light of the upcoming presidential election in the United States. Acknowledging the current political climate, they reflect on the fatigue and tension many are feeling due to the election process. This episode aims to provide listeners with insights and considerations to think about as they prepare to cast their ballots, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, love, and courage in these challenging times. Tune in for a thoughtful conversation that encourages better peacemaking amidst political turmoil.

Timestamps

[00:02:41] Peace in political spheres.

[00:05:15] Message of peace in faith.

[00:09:13] Peacemakers in scripture.

[00:12:56] Leadership qualities for peace.

[00:16:55] Peacemakers unify rather than divide.

[00:19:36] Leadership and societal unity.

[00:23:34] Peacemakers see people as people.

[00:26:35] Zero-sum politics in society.

[00:30:34] Peacemakers show curiosity, not judgment.

[00:35:05] Curiosity in difficult conversations.

[00:39:05] Trust in society's foundations.

[00:41:25] Love your enemies principle.

[00:46:27] Courageous peacemaking in conflict.

[00:50:29] Transformational value of sacrifice.

[00:54:12] Sacrifice in leadership and society.

[00:59:09] Voting as a peaceful transformation.

Transcript

(00:03-00:06) Jennifer Thomas: Welcome to the Proclaim Peace Podcast. I'm Jennifer Thomas.
(00:06-00:47) Patrick Mason: And I'm Patrick Mason. And this is the podcast where we apply principles of the gospel and read the Book of Mormon to become better peacemakers. Hey everyone and welcome to this special episode of Proclaim Peace. We just wanted to let you know we're a little bit off schedule from our normal schedule. That's because we wanted to release this episode in time before the elections here in the United States. And so maybe there'll be some things for you to think about as you cast your ballots. So we will have this episode and then we won't be back again for another three weeks and then we'll be back on our regular schedule. So we just wanted to let you know what's going on there. Thanks for listening.

(00:47-00:48) Jennifer Thomas: How are you holding in, Patrick?

(00:49-01:15) Patrick Mason: Oh, I'm I'm doing great, Jen. Actually, to be honest, though, we're recording this what a week and a half or so before the presidential election. And I'll be honest, I'm a little tired. You've got to be even more tired. Like I'm I'm on I'm on the back. I'm on the back rows of protecting democracy. You're on the front lines of protecting democracy. You have to be exhausted.

(01:15-01:21) Jennifer Thomas: I think everyone's tired. Yeah, I think they're all tired because this process hasn't been very peaceful.

(01:21-02:41) Patrick Mason: Exactly. Now, fortunately, we've not seen in the United States so far in this election, you know, widespread, you know, political violence or something like that. But we've seen assassination attempts. We've seen obviously the I think people's interpersonal relationships have not been entirely peaceful. The rhetoric in our country has not been peaceful. The TV, you know, airwaves and social media has has not been peaceful. So and of course, I think a lot of us are thinking not just about what happens on November 5th on Election Day, but But what happens in the week and month and two months and three months after that, right? So, you know, we've been talking about peace in lots of different senses this season on the podcast in terms of, you know, family relationships and media literacy and nonviolence and kind of lots of different directions. And I think that's all fantastic, but there's always been this kind of like elephant in the room, I think, especially this year. It's like, how does all of this stuff apply to the political sphere, to this election season, when everything feels like it's high stakes, everything seems so exhausting, and it seems like peace is so elusive?

(02:41-03:04) Jennifer Thomas: Yes. And I think that the hard situation in which we find ourselves is One of the tactics of politics is to make us feel less peaceful on purpose, to try to help us feel like everything will be chaos if we don't go one way or the other. And that makes those decisions that we're making feel even more difficult.

(03:04-03:06) Patrick Mason: It feels like everything is riding on them, right?

(03:07-03:18) Jennifer Thomas: Everything is writing on them, right? But I think that the good news we have to share with our listeners today is that I think the answer is, as always, right there in the Book of Mormon.

(03:18-03:25) Patrick Mason: Fantastic. So I have my mail-in ballot. I haven't filled it out yet. So the Book of Mormon is going to tell me who to vote for. Yes.

(03:25-03:30) Jennifer Thomas: Yes. No. Come on, Patrick. It absolutely is not going to do that.

(03:30-03:36) Patrick Mason: I mean, I live in Utah. There might be a Nephi or an Alma on the ballot. Maybe on the ballot, right? I haven't worked that carefully yet.

(03:38-04:21) Jennifer Thomas: So I think we just want to assure our listeners that what we are not saying is that there's some weird Da Vinci code-like process that's going to reveal the name of any particular candidate. And you shouldn't make a direct correlation between what their parents named them and whether you vote for them. And it also isn't going to tell you to be a Democrat or a Republican. That book is not going to tell you that. And that might sound really controversial to some of our listeners. And I hope it doesn't make people mad, because I really believe that that is true. This book does not exist to justify our politics. In fact, it's about something much, much bigger and much more important. So if this episode isn't going to give you an answer to November's biggest questions specifically, then what can it teach us about?

(04:22-06:19) Patrick Mason: Well, I hope that we've made the case over the past several months that has something to teach us about peace. And in some ways, I mean, you said it may not give us the answer to November's biggest questions. I wonder if actually some of the questions that we think are the biggest questions may actually be some of the smaller questions. Yes. that actually there are bigger questions that the Book of Mormon is pointing us to that helps us resolve the things that, again, they are important. It really does matter, right? We live in a world, politics does matter, right? You've dedicated your life to this over the past few years of trying to bring more peace and civility and functionality and democracy into the political sphere. But I think that, you know, the Book of Mormon, it is a message of peace. And I think that's true on several different levels. And again, we've been trying to make this case throughout the season. First and foremost, it is, as the subtitle says, it is a testimony of Jesus Christ. right? It is a witness of the Prince of Peace. And I just, as I continue to read the Book of Mormon through this lens, I'm just struck over and over and over by that witness. Not just that, again, as a Latter-day Saint, I believe that Jesus is my Savior, I believe He's the Son of God, so that's important to me as a faith claim, but also that Jesus provides the way to peace, right? That following Him is to follow in the way of peace. Now, that's not to say, I mean, I've got Buddhist friends and Muslim friends and atheist friends, right? They don't believe the same things that I believe about Jesus, and so it doesn't mean that they can't be peaceful, but what it does mean that if I do believe in Jesus, Right? If that's the center of my faith, then to follow him means to walk in the way of peace.

(06:19-07:02) Jennifer Thomas: Well, and for me, the Book of Mormon does this just remarkable job of connecting me to him. I find him in all the pages. I figure out exactly how he wants me to behave and what he wants me to do. And well, for me, the Book of Mormon is a really important text in terms of patterns that societies have followed and problems that emerged in families and how we can push back on them. Ultimately, its most important role in my life is directing me to Christ. And so if you are feeling anxious, that's our first thing that we would tell you is to read the Book of Mormon with an intent to come to know Jesus Christ better and to find ways that that will personally build peace in your life.

(07:03-08:14) Patrick Mason: Yeah. And I think that relates to maybe a second way that the Book of Mormon has worked for me to teach me about peace, is that reading, it sort of pulls me out of my daily life, not in a kind of permanent way, not in the way that my daily life doesn't matter. But it's a moment of retreat or, you know, mindfulness, whatever word that you want to use for that. So maybe a different way to say that is the Book of Mormon helps me cut through the noise, right? There's so much noise, distraction. I'm constantly being assaulted with headlines and notifications and all these kinds of things. And the Book of Mormon, there's a kind of perspective that comes from scripture. I think this is one of the great purposes of scripture, actually, is that it pulls us out temporarily of this world we live in to put our minds in a different place so that then we can re-engage with a different kind of energy, a different kind of focus and perspective.

(08:14-08:50) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah. Scripture does two magical things for me at once. First, it helps me remember how completely valuable and important I am. It establishes a really deeply personal relationship with my Savior, but then it also at the same time reminds me of what is inconsequential. So it makes me feel important and also in the good ways, but then it also points out to me in good ways that I'm just part of a flow of history. I'm part of the pattern of all of God's children trying to move towards something better, and what role am I gonna play in that? Makes me ask myself that question.

(08:51-08:56) Patrick Mason: There's this paradox, right, that we're both everything and nothing in scripture, right?

(08:56-09:02) Jennifer Thomas: And I don't think there's anything else in our world that does that. It either tells us we're nothing or it tells us we're everything.

(09:02-09:48) Patrick Mason: Yeah, I find that so useful, right? Grounding when I need to be grounded and elevating when I need to be elevated, right? And hopefully I don't mix up those two. And then I think the other thing that the Book of Mormon does for me, and other scripture as well, But the Book of Mormon gives me examples of peacemakers and peacemaking. It's one thing to talk about it kind of in the abstract, and sometimes we can do that. I have a tendency to do that. But the Book of Mormon is so fantastic because it's grounded in all these amazing stories of people who lived complicated lives, lived in complicated situations that I can relate to in my own way, right? Separated by time and place and culture and all those kinds of things.

(09:49-09:51) Jennifer Thomas: But there are stories of the human condition, right?

(09:51-10:06) Patrick Mason: Yeah, they're real human stories. Yeah. And so I find that really valuable, just that I can see how somebody else did it, right? Sometimes well, sometimes poorly. And then I can reflect on that for myself.

(10:07-12:13) Jennifer Thomas: Okay, so we are gonna cover a lot of the things we've just talked about in this special pre-election episode. But before we get started, Patrick and I do wanna put a stake in the ground regarding what we think this beautiful book of scripture, which I hope you can hear that we both love and believe in, cannot and should not be asked to do for us. Like we said, it isn't a code book that's filled with one-to-one parallels. And let me say, expand a little bit and tell you what I mean by that. First, I think it's really important for us to understand that one creepy bad guy in the book doesn't equal the creepy bad guy walking around today that we particularly don't like. So we shouldn't draw one-to-one parallels between people. It's just not helpful. The second is even almost worse when you say that group of horrible people who are clearly violent and problematic and wicked is equal to a group of people that I particularly find abhorrent and problematic and wicked and maybe even considered to be my enemy today. Because that always puts us in reading the book in a way that we are always the good guys. We are always the ones that would not do the bad thing. And in fact, I believe that scripture exists to tell us the exact opposite. Instead of telling us how to find and see enemies around us, it is there to remind us that of the enemy within that is an enemy to Christ. And what do we need to do to change ourself and change our society so that we can better align with Him? The other thing I think that's problematic when we do that with the scripture and we see there's a real temptation to do it and we see it happen and we often see this bad parallel structure happen a lot in particularly election years in the United States. But we just want to say that when we do that we weaponize scripture and specifically we weaponize it in order to use it as a weapon against people that we don't like. And we just want to caution that that really damages the authority of the book. It means that anyone that it's been wielded as a weapon against is less inclined to believe in it and like it. And it diminishes our ability to use that book to bring people unto Christ. So we just want to be very clear that that is not what we're going to be doing today.

(12:13-13:56) Patrick Mason: Exactly. So we're not going to be looking for parallels. We're not going to say this person in the Book of Mormon is just like this person in 2024, or this group of people is just like this group of people. Because I completely agree, that's not what it's here for. But it is here to teach us principles and patterns. That's what it helps us do. So we're going to do that today, actually, in a little bit different mode than we normally are on this podcast. Jen and I like asking the questions rather than always giving the answers. But here we decided that maybe we would just have a conversation between the two of us. And specifically what we want to talk about is how the Book of Mormon helps us think about the qualities of leadership that allows us to build peace in our society. And we're going to be looking at some of the key figures in the Book of Mormon who we think can help teach us lessons and principles about how we can apply the principles of peace and peacemaking in leadership in our societies. And this is exactly where our voting comes in. that you may not be running for office, probably most of you listening are not running for office, but we have the benefit, the privilege, the blessing of living in a society where we do get to choose our leaders. And so we hope that as you listen, that you'll get some information, again, not parallels, but principles and patterns that'll help you exercise your right, your privilege to vote and to select representatives at the local, state, federal level. Sometimes the race for the presidency just sucks up all the oxygen.

(13:56-13:58) Jennifer Thomas: Takes up way too much oxygen. Yeah, they agree.

(13:58-14:28) Patrick Mason: But that is one office, an extraordinarily important office, but it's one office. And so you on your ballot, depending on where you live, depending on what it looks like, you may have dozens of people to vote for. You know, the school board, an attorney general, and city counselor, and all of these things are really, really important. Because in a free society, peacemaking does not just rest on the shoulders of our leaders, let alone the leader at the very top. Peacemaking rests on all of our shoulders.

(14:28-15:29) Jennifer Thomas: So let's do this. We hope that as you listen, you hear those patterns and those principles emerge. And one of the reasons that they are so important to bring out is because they are very, very powerful. So if you feel a twinge of concern as you listen and say, I just OK, I feel like maybe they're talking about my people. Patrick and I really want to just assure you we are not. We really are just talking about those principles and those patterns. And that is maybe your heart saying, hey, I need to look at this a little bit differently. We personally really do believe that the Book of Mormon was written for our day, and so we believe that those twinges that come at us are something important and that's worth listening to. We've both found a lot of peace and personal direction in the pages of this book, and we have a lot of confidence that it has the capacity, particularly for the people who believe that it is Scripture, to help us find our way out of all of this unpleasantness and to do it together as a community of saints.

(15:30-15:43) Patrick Mason: Okay, so let's dive in. We sort of went back and forth. Do we want to focus more on individuals or on principles? And what we decided is we want to focus on principles because other than one person in the Book of Mormon, nobody's perfect.

(15:43-15:53) Jennifer Thomas: And every time we talk about this person as like a paradigm of peacemaking, we're like, well, but then there were also those problems. And that's the tricky thing about voting. You find yourself in that same boat, right?

(15:53-16:43) Patrick Mason: And that's why I think the Book of Mormon is so useful, right? It's a story of people who exemplify great principles at one moment and then in another moment, in another situation, maybe they could have done better. Just by faith. right? And so that's why we're going to focus on these principles and patterns. We will eventually land on, spoiler alert, the one person who does exemplify all of these things perfectly. But most of us are not perfect. And so we're going to learn from some of these principles. We're going to talk about What are some principles of peacemaking that are exemplified by certain Book of Mormon leaders at certain moments that maybe we can consider or maybe we should consider, maybe the Book of Mormon is inviting us to consider as we look at our ballots this election season? Okay, so first principle.

(16:43-16:44) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah. Do you want me to take that?

(16:44-16:45) Patrick Mason: Yeah, go for it.

(16:45-18:27) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah. So I think we want to start with the idea that is really foundational to peacemaking, and that is that peacemakers unify rather than divide. That is one of their main objectives, is to model themselves, particularly as Christians, after a holy being who sought to bring us all together and bring us into alignment with him. Now, the Book of Mormon begins as a family story that teaches us actually a lot about the consequences of division at a very elemental, personal, and familial level. We've talked about this earlier in the podcast, We've got Lehi and Sariah. They have four sons who do not get along. And then they have later children who struggle and reap the consequences of that dysfunction. And the two older sons constantly abuse the younger ones. They threaten them on multiple occasions. They threaten them with death and all sorts of pain. And they inflict pain. And the parents aren't able to stop their sons from doing that. I think almost every parent, particularly a parent of boys, probably understands that sometimes We choose violets. But Lehi and Soraya's transparent love, trustworthiness, and their deeply principled familial leadership earns respect from all four of those sons. They still manage, in spite of a lot of crisis, tension, exodus, starvation, to be the glue that keeps this family together. And it's only once they die and no one else is able to step up as a unifier that the family tragically splits up and a whole societal kind of conflict spins off from.

(18:27-18:43) Patrick Mason: Yeah. So how do you think, Jen, how does this relate to our society now? How does this relate to when people are looking at the ballot? What do Lehigh and Soraya have to teach us about the kind of principles of leadership and peacemaking that we should be looking for?

(18:44-20:18) Jennifer Thomas: So I think what they have to teach us is that there will always be people in our society who don't get along, who have a hard time understanding each other. They sometimes do harm to each other. And that can result in sort of accumulated pain and frustration. But in a pluralistic and diverse society, which is one we live in, right? We live in a society that is unified by shared government principles. We're not unified by a tribe or religion. This is a really novel experiment in human history. And when we've done it right, it's been a source of great blessing to the world. So we just remember that this is how America is founded on this idea that people are going to be different and they're going to come into conflict with one another. And so what we have always needed is leaders who are adept and deeply committed to finding unity and bringing it up out of that division. The leaders who have done that are the ones that have been able to take us through periods of significant conflict and suffering and to be able to transcend our differences and come to a place of reunification. So that is one of the things that's very important to me as I'm selecting leaders. And this can be true in my town. I have a very small, with very small town government, all the way up to the highest office that I vote for. To me, one of my foundational things is, is this a leader who, while still holding true to their principles, I'm not saying they have to be all in the mushy middle, but that they are committed to the idea that we all need to be first unified in our endeavors and working together.

(20:18-22:02) Patrick Mason: I think that's exactly what Lehi and Soraya show us, right? Now, again, parents are slightly, you know, it's a slightly different role than a political leader, right? So it's not, again, a one-to-one correspondence. But again, the principle here is that they do have—this group of people does not get along, right? And they go through hardship, and they care about these people. They can't stop them from arguing. But what they bring at the familial level, but I think this can absolutely happen at the community level, ideally at the national level, is that the things that unify us are more important than the things that divide us. And they didn't pick favorites. They probably did think that Nephi was right more often than Laman and Lemuel. But they knew that actually, they were going to win only if everybody won together as much as they could. And that I think is really important. And so that kind of canary in the coal mine, oftentimes for broader conflict that spirals, you can call it a conflict tornado or something like that, is Are there ways that we feed the conflict? Are there ways that our leaders divide us and pick favorites and create an us versus them that will inevitably escalate the conflict? That's exactly what we see after Lehigh and Soraya leave the scene. or are our leaders trying to restrain our worst impulses? Are they trying to model what it looks like? Not perfectly, but the best they can. Are they trying to be the glue that holds this disparate society together?

(22:04-23:22) Jennifer Thomas: So we've talked about this early in the conversation, and I just want to reinforce it almost every time we talk about one of these principles, that we are talking about leaders. We're talking about how we can see the qualities in our leaders that are going to bring us towards societal peace. But again, in a free society, they are representatives of us, and we can't hide from the way that they often reveal ourselves to us. So I just want to put a pin in the fact that it is incredibly important for us to model this to everyone around us in the sense that if we want to have a unified society there are critical and important roles for each of us as followers of Christ to play in building that unification and and always making sure that we are talking about people in ways that are inclusive, that imply that they have a stake in the game, that doesn't make it seem like we think that they're lesser than in terms of being citizens or being participants in our nation. And so are we ourselves modeling this and doing this, speaking about people in a way that pushes us towards unity rather than away from it?

(23:23-24:27) Patrick Mason: Yeah. Well, I think that connects then to the second principle. So the first principle was the peacemakers seek to unify rather than divide. The second principle that we see emerging from the Book of Mormon is that peacemakers see people as people, not as objects or obstacles. This is so important, and I think it flows directly from that first one and what you were just saying. And I think here about the the four sons of King Mosiah, Ammon and his brothers, that they had been in generations of violent conflict with the Lamanites. These patterns were very well set. The assumptions that each group had about the other were really calcified. And so, when they had their conversion experience and they felt prompted by the Spirit to go be missionaries to the Lamanites, right? What did all their friends say? It's like, that's impossible. You're ridiculous, right? They are so hard-hearted. Those people over there are so terrible. They only want to kill you. They are only a danger for you. They could only see them through that lens.

(24:27-24:41) Jennifer Thomas: And can I just insert that I think one of the things that's so telling to me is that these men were primed or had offered to them the opportunity to be leaders. That was what they were born to be under this system.

(24:41-24:43) Patrick Mason: Groomed. They probably had lessons and training.

(24:43-24:48) Jennifer Thomas: Yes, exactly. And yet they've made a decision to lead in a very specifically different way.

(24:49-26:35) Patrick Mason: Yeah. Peacemaking is courageous in the sense that it is willing to be critical of and prophetic towards these assumptions and narratives, the stories that we tell about them, about the other side. Because Peacemakers see people as people. And so these sons of Mosiah, they said, no, these aren't these evil, dangerous, bloodthirsty, lame. I mean, it's not to neglect our history, right? It's not to neglect the fact that we have been locked in battle for centuries. Our side has suffered, but their side has suffered too. right? And we're gonna see them as children of God. We're gonna see them as fellow human beings. And that, I think, is the most radical thing that the Sons of Mosiah do. We can talk about the other things they do on their missions to make them effective missionaries, right? The service that Ammon gives and so forth. But all of that stems from the fact that he sees the Lamanites, they all do, Aaron and the others, they see these people as people. It pains them to have this kind of division. And so they refused to see them simply as a stereotype. They refused to see them simply as what social media told them about the Lamanites, right? That they insisted on seeing them as people. So what does this look like, Jen? I mean, this is maybe the biggest thing that we face today, right? We have algorithms, we have bots, we have disinformation campaigns, right, that are they're specifically trying to get us to see people as objects. So what does this look like and how do we apply this principle today?

(26:35-28:42) Jennifer Thomas: For me, one of the biggest signs that we've headed in the wrong direction as a society in this regard is the fact that our politics now is zero sum. So it used to be, and we're old, so we remember this, Patrick, that there was a time when basically winning an election, particularly at a federal or a state level where you were overseeing a legislature or, you know, you were representing America in Congress, What that meant is that you had the opportunity to set the agenda. It didn't mean that you got to run the country the way only you wanted to run the country to the detriment of all the people who hadn't voted for you. It meant that you got to set the agenda and then you worked with the people who you disagreed with to figure out how you could tweak that agenda so that it leaned toward the side that had won the election and was in the majority. And now we're at a point where we literally see each other as obstacles to our agenda. Whether it's on the left or the right, we're concerned that if the other side controls things, then they will just treat our side as obstacles to their path to complete power. And so I think that's something that we have to really watch for both in ourself and in our leaders. Are our leaders speaking to us and saying, hey, I am excited about the opportunity to control the agenda, and here is what I'm going to put forward. for both sides to discuss and vote on? Or are they saying, we have to get enough seats so that we can do whatever we want, regardless of how it hurts other people or whether it's what they agree with. That's treating people as objects or obstacles. And we have an opportunity to vote for leaders who are still have signs of collaboration and bipartisanship. And even in this really difficult period in our nation's history, There have been signs of that, but we've gotten to a point where we now punish people who do that. And that's on us. That's on us as a people, whether we are punishing leaders who work collaboratively or whether and whether we're rewarding leaders who see the opposition as obstacles.

(28:42-29:47) Patrick Mason: Yeah, and again, this is where we have an entire ballot of people. My sense, and I don't know if you agree, is that the higher you get up the ballot in terms of that there's even more and more incentives for this kind of zero-sum politics. So that's what we see at the national level. But at the local level, especially, right? It's like, you're talking about like fixing potholes. And you're talking about actual human issues. What do we do in a community where we've had an influx of immigrants? What do we do where there are a bunch of kids who are going to school hungry? What do we do with these kinds of human elements? And so even if there's a certain amount of like, I don't know that I can do anything to fix things at the national politics. Of course, this is what MWAG is doing, right? But also like, can I do this at a local level? Can I both elect people and can I do this myself, even after the election, right? Can I be in contact with my elected officials to encourage them and say, hey, I'm on team, see people as people, right? That's what I want you to do too.

(29:48-30:31) Jennifer Thomas: Yes. I'm on team my city. I'm on my town. I'm on team my state. And I would just argue that this is exactly where all of us can make the biggest difference because we we have a much more likelihood of knowing the people who are on the other side of an issue. And we have the opportunity with pretty much a lot of ease to find them and connect with them. And so I would just encourage all of us who are listening, if you find yourself in a situation where you're despairing about this and you want to personally practice seeing people as people, not as objects or obstacles, your local relationships, community relationships are the best place to start practicing that.

(30:31-30:34) Patrick Mason: Yeah. OK, so Jen, what's the third rule?

(30:34-33:00) Jennifer Thomas: So our next one is peacemakers show curiosity, not judgment. And we're going to call this out. Yeah, exactly. So at one point in the Book of Mormon narrative, the Nephites and the Lamanites, they've been, you know, Sadly, we get to a point where there's just endless conflict in this, you know, with a few brief reprieves. They just are fighting and there's no end in sight. The Nephite's main military leader, Moroni, is deeply frustrated. He's in a high tension environment. It again feels high stakes. His people are under real and significant threat. And he's frustrated by what he sees as lack of support from the central government. And, you know, communications in that situation are probably not immediate. So he fires off a letter of just rage to the head of government and he accuses him of treason. He like he escalates really fast. But what Moroni doesn't know is that. That leader is fighting his own battle against insurrectionists and they've taken the capital and they're in alliance with the Lamanites and Pohoran doesn't reply with self-justification or indignant anger. Instead he praises Moroni for what he sees as the quote greatness of his heart. He sees what is at the root of Moroni's concern And he shares that concern with Moroni, and he just sort of decides I'm not going to be personally offended by that. He chooses to believe the best about the person who has just accused him of treason. And I've got to be honest, there's a lot of that flying around this election, right? Everyone accusing everybody else of, like, betraying the deepest principles of this government. And he invites him into a relationship where he says, hey, let's work together for this common cause of freedom. And to his credit, Moroni then responds in kind, and together, because of that, they were able to put down the insurrection and secure the peace and freedom of the people. Now, always, we can't say what will happen when we're playing a counterfactual argument, but I cannot imagine that their opportunity to fight the enemy without would have improved if they had started seeing each other as enemies from within. And the key to unlocking that, the key to like literally taking a whole different course that saved their society was one leader showing curiosity and privileging that over judgment.

(33:01-34:19) Patrick Mason: Yeah, it is so hard to do, right? It's so hard to do in our personal lives when we feel attacked, when we have been attacked. Again, this stems from the previous principle of seeing people as people, of having that kind of curiosity. What is it about them, about their situation, about their experience, about what they've seen in life, the set of relationships that they have outside of our relationship that led them to say this or to do this particular thing? In my experience, most people are not sociopaths. There are some out there, right? And that's why we have criminal justice systems and so forth to try to remove some of those threats from society. But most people are not. Most people come at politics at the local, at the national level because of a set of experiences, of a way that they see the world. This is where I appreciate the research of people like Jonathan Haidt, you know, the righteous mind. I mean, just people see the world in different ways. And so I love the historical examples of leaders who have prioritized dialogue with the quote-unquote opposition, right? I mean, Lincoln, I think, really stands out here, his team of rivals, but also his speeches, right, with malice toward none.

(34:20-34:23) Jennifer Thomas: Let us be friends, not enemies.

(34:23-34:40) Patrick Mason: Let us be friends, not enemies. Whatever you think about Lincoln, I mean, amazing, probably our best president. Certainly up there, there's a reason he's on Mount Rushmore. But it's because he never let go of the fact that these were not enemies that he was fighting against.

(34:40-34:47) Jennifer Thomas: He was always curious. You hear the narratives and he always wanted to hear explanations before jumping to judgment.

(34:48-35:03) Patrick Mason: Yeah, he wanted data. He wanted information. He wanted to know what is really going on. He was making those kinds of decisions. So what do you think, Jen? Are there any examples of this or personal stories that you can think of?

(35:03-35:05) Jennifer Thomas: I have an embarrassing one. Can I share it?

(35:05-35:05) Patrick Mason: Yes, please.

(35:05-36:02) Jennifer Thomas: So I spend a lot of time in Ubers because I travel for work. And and I miss I lived in New York for a while. And boy, do I miss old New York cabbies because you get in the car and they don't want to talk to you and you don't want to talk to them. And we're here. We're going to a place. We're in a confined space. That doesn't mean we have to talk to each other. I find that Uber drivers, bless them, it would be solitary work, want to talk to me a lot. And I was recently in a situation where I had a cab driver who really started by just launching, I don't, it was bizarre, I don't even know where it came from, but he just said, you know, blah, blah, blah, and then said something really derogatory about someone, a political leader that I actually tend to admire for a lot of reasons. And so then I was like, OK, what are my options here? I tried to signal that I didn't really want to talk. Those signals were not being picked up.

(36:02-36:04) Patrick Mason: You had your AirPods in and everything.

(36:04-38:16) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah. So my option there was to be curious. That was really the only option I had, Patrick. I could be argumentative. I could try to explain my position and why I thought it was different. or in a situation in which I was being forced to have a conversation that I didn't want to have. about a topic that I didn't want to have, about with a person that I had no relationship with, the only way out was curiosity. And so I just kept asking questions. And every time he would say something, and I'm going to tell you right now, 95% of the time, I disagreed with it heartily. I would just ask another question. And we got to the end of the ride, and something might have clicked in his head because he said, do you agree with me? And I said, I actually don't. I said, but I have appreciated the chance to understand why you think what you think. And that was the end of the conversation and I got out of the car. Now, let me tell you why I think that was important. First, it didn't, it didn't change my heart and didn't change his. But I also didn't leave that conversation angry or mad or, um, or I didn't leave either of us worse off than I'd found us. And I will say that I don't agree with where his experience landed him, the conclusions he drew from those experiences, but I do truly, sincerely understand why he came to those conclusions. Does that make sense? Absolutely. I wish he'd drawn different conclusions. I wish that in a different relationship, I would have had time to say, hey, here are some alternative conclusions you could draw from that information. But that wasn't the right time or place. Now, here's why that story doesn't reflect well on me. I'm still a little bit mad about it, Patrick. I wish in my heart, I'm going to be honest with everyone listening, I wish in my heart I'd had the opportunity to tell him why he was wrong, but I didn't and that's okay. Part of it is being curious and then part of it is what I haven't fixed is the judgment part of me. I've fixed curiosity, now my next step is to figure out how to not be judgy Jim.

(38:16-38:57) Patrick Mason: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think there's anything embarrassing about that story at all. I actually think it's exemplary. And the fact is, we don't all have unlimited time or deep relationships with everybody we have. Most of our relationships, most of our conversations around politics are probably more like that. They're short, they're brief. Sometimes they're character limited on certain platforms and other things. And so that's why I think it really is exemplary in the sense like in this moment, and that's all I'm going to have to go. I do know I'm going to get out of this car. In this moment, what am I going to choose? And you chose curiosity. So kudos to you.

(38:58-39:53) Jennifer Thomas: Well, can I just make one push before we move on? Yes. I really want to emphasize how much our society and all of its awesomeness is built on trust. So when my children are, I have young adult, college age children, and they have grown up in a period of pretty significant cynicism and difficulty. And they kind of, it's easy for them to pick that cynicism up. And one of the things that I've asked them to do repeatedly is to look around at the world and do a better job of correctly assessing how much of what they enjoy is a result of trust. Somebody that I trust, or somebody that someone trusted built the house I live in, and they did it well, and it's literally stood for 100 years. When I get in my car and drive down the street, I put a high level of trust in the people that are coming towards me.

(39:54-39:55) Patrick Mason: and then the people who built the car.

(39:55-40:52) Jennifer Thomas: Yes, that they would do a good job and that they put care and thought into that. I guess what I'm just saying is it's really delightful actually once you start spinning down that road to start to think about how much the world around us demonstrates with ample evidence that people are actually good, that they do amazing things together, that when they live in high-trust societies, the benefits exist to everyone. And I guess I just want to link that to this particular point, because curiosity is the first step to establishing trust. And it's one of the first ways that we, it's one of the first, I guess, defenses we can have against people who are trying to break down our trust in one another. We can choose to be curious and try to understand why that's happening and refuse to let ourselves have our trust in each other undermined for no good reason.

(40:53-42:30) Patrick Mason: Yeah, well, I'm going to count that as a bonus principle, one we weren't even planning on. But the peacemakers lean into trust, right? I love that. OK, so a fourth principle is that peacemakers choose love instead of hate, especially towards the people they disagree with or who have treated them poorly. And you can see how all of these principles actually interrelate with one another, but they emphasize different things. And I think this is This has got to be one of the most difficult principles of peacemaking. It's why, of course, everybody knows that Jesus says, love your enemies, but that's oftentimes, it's part of a sayings that people call the hard sayings of Jesus, right? It's not the easy part. And there's lots of examples of this. I think about Enos from the Book of Mormon, that he goes into the woods to pray for repentance, for forgiveness of his sins, and he receives that. He hears the voice of God granting him forgiveness. It's this amazing experience. But then that expands his heart. I think about, like, the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, right? I still have little kids, so we watch that every Christmas, right? And when he hears the Who's singing, right, his heart expands, you know, of one size and then two sizes and three sizes. So I think Enos' heart expands a size, and it expands to now include his people. the Nephites and he prays for them and he prays for their welfare. That's absolutely appropriate. We care about ours, right? Our family, the people around us.

(42:30-42:37) Jennifer Thomas: That's actually harder than we give it credit for. So, right? He starts with himself and then he moves to the people closest to him.

(42:37-43:15) Patrick Mason: Yeah. And then his heart grows some more, you know, when he hears God's voice and reassurance. And then he takes that kind of risky move to pray for the people. And again, he's now multiple generations into the conflict. between the Nephites and the Lamanites. We don't know that much about him, but he may well have been part of this. We know because he reports that at this point already, the Nephites had talked about the Lamanites as being wild and ferocious and a bloodthirsty people full of idolatry and filthiness. So they already had stories about these people who were their cousins. Like these are like their second and third cousins.

(43:15-43:20) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, we've already started using that dehumanizing language we talked about earlier, right?

(43:21-44:41) Patrick Mason: But his heart has grown, and so he prays for them. And what I love is that in this moment when he prays for them, he doesn't say, God, please bless the wild and ferocious and bloodthirsty people, right? He calls them his brethren. He sees people as people, not as objects, right? And he recognizes their common humanity. Now, they're literally part of a family tree that they can trace back to Lehi and Sariah, but aren't we all, right, in a way? And he prays for them, and it's that prayer. Actually, we know that there is, at the end of the book, right, spoiler alert, all the Nephites are killed and the Lamanites are preserved. But actually, this comes back to prayers that the Nephites had prayed for the Lamanites on their behalf. It's these kinds of prayers. And so, I think, and as I thought about this, Jen, this is where it is embarrassing for me, like, I don't know that I pray that way very often. I don't know that really my heart turns to prayer, not to change other people, but that God would genuinely bless other people. Do I pray with that heart of love towards the people that I too often think of as my enemies?

(44:41-48:53) Jennifer Thomas: We're talking today about principles of leadership. And I just really want to put a pin in this because it is absolutely fundamentally critical that we select leaders who choose love instead of hate, especially against people that they don't like or that they don't think will support them. And if our leaders, it's so easy for us, I just think you've pointed out, Patrick, it's human nature to set ourselves up at enmity with one another, right? It's really easy for me to get offended by someone, to be hurt by something that they did to me, and decide that I'm going to carry that forward for months and years. That's just easy. And if the leaders around me are encouraging me to do that, are prompting me to do that, are telling me that it's in my best interest to do that, it's really easy to see how our society rapidly starts to break down. What we need from our leadership are people who say, hey, I am firm about this principle of right or wrong, or I'm firm about this principle about what I hope to accomplish for our nation or our state or our city, but I am never going to use hate towards other people as a mechanism to get something accomplished. think that's a really early red flag for us that we or a later red flag actually that we should be able to see and use as we judge and select the people who are going to lead us. So one of the final things we want to talk about is the fact that peacemakers are proactive and courageous and one of for me and I think for many people one of the best examples of peacemaking in the Book of Mormon comes from a group of Lamanites who once they had accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ once they had quite literally transformed their hearts into just pure disciple hearts. They chose to bury their swords in the ground as a sign that they were not going to fall back into hatred and violence. And these converts called the anti-Nephi-Lehi's were considered traitors by the other Lamanites who saw them as as I think abandoning them and potentially saw them as, you know, people that were a threat to their security and safety because they felt that the Nephites were a threat to their security and safety. And those Nephite or Lamanites then came after them and attacked them. The response to that attack is to me one of the greatest examples of proactive and courageous peacemaking that we have ever encountered. As the attacking Lamanite army approached, they didn't retrieve their weapons and fight back, they didn't yell, and they didn't run away. Instead, they went out, quote, went out to meet them and prostrated themselves before them. They basically put their bodies between the invaders and the safety of their families. As the Lamanites continued to attack them, they were instantly confused because that is not how people should behave. and it caused them to drop their weapons. It brought them to a sense of the harm that they were doing in a way that yelling, fighting, arguing never could have. And so it's just really important to point out that in the midst of a bloody years-long war, what stopped an invading army in their attacks was the courageous act of an unarmed group of people who proactively chose peace rather than choosing an unending war. And I just want to be really briefly and honest and say that this is hard. We're asking for a hard thing. And it's a lot harder if earlier on in our cycle, we've made bad choices regarding how we tolerate division, enmity and dehumanization. It's going to be harder for us to make peace with people that we see as our enemies. But that courage is going to be necessary for if we want to bring peace. And so I don't know, Patrick, tell me what your thoughts about that. How how do we how do we benchmark leaders on whether they have the courage to lead us towards peace or because courage towards leading a group of people towards war is actually pretty easy. It's hard to have the courage to lead them towards peace.

(48:53-50:19) Patrick Mason: Well, and that's the thing. It's easier to throw red meat. It's easier to just attack. It is far more courageous to do what the anti-Nephi-Lehies did. It's far more courageous. You know, we talked earlier about Pahoran, right? That's a courageous response to Moroni. And when you think about people like Gandhi and his followers, when you think about Martin Luther King and their followers, it is an act of supreme courage to go and to stand for love and to stand for peace. When you know that you're going to be attacked, you know that you're going to be called weak, You know that you're going to be called passive. You know that you're going to be- You might physically be harmed. You might be harmed, right? Emotionally, physically, reputationally, you might be harmed. You may be seen as not standing up for things that really matter, right? When in fact, you are standing up for the things that matter most. So it's easy to say in the abstract, right? This is one of the things, frankly, that continues to inspire me as a peacemaker is the examples of those who have courageously chosen the path of sacrifice, because that's what it is.

(50:19-50:29) Jennifer Thomas: And that leads us, I think, perfectly into our last kind of leadership quality, which is that peacemakers understand the transformational value of sacrifice.

(50:29-52:44) Patrick Mason: Yeah. And this can be hard, and maybe we'll spend a whole episode on this at some point in the future. But I do hear sometimes, you know, when I talk about this, you know, the necessity of sacrifice as part of peacemaking. There's a danger here to say, oh, so now you're asking the victims to suffer more. And that is tricky, ethically and morally. But what I do want to point out is that the greatest icons of peacemaking are people who were themselves marginalized and oftentimes victims, right? So Gandhi did not operate from a place of privilege. King did not operate from a place of privilege. And think of somebody like Malala, right, does not operate from a place of privilege. And so these are people who are operating from a place where they have been on the receiving end of violence and conflict and injustice. And of course the greatest example here, and this is to the Book of Mormon witnesses as the perfect example of peacemaking, is Jesus. You know, Abinadi, when he talks about publishing peace and so forth, he's pointing us to the Prince of Peace, to Jesus. Jesus was not operating from a place of privilege. He was operating from the bottom of society, not the top of society, and he willingly sacrificed for the cause of peace. I mean, he tells Peter, I could bring legions of angels, right? He could have chosen a different path. He could have chosen the path of the zealots. He could have tried to bring about righteousness in a different way. We've talked about the temptations that he had in the wilderness. We've talked about all these different, but he rejected that for a path of self-sacrifice. And that's what he calls us to in the work of peacemaking as well. Again, it's a difficult conversation. There's a lot of ethical conversations that can be fraught around that, but it's hard to avoid, actually. How do you think about this, Jen?

(52:45-53:40) Jennifer Thomas: Well, I'm going to argue, even though I don't think I have very much, but that's probably wrong, that it also requires a lot of… Christ asks us if we're going to be peacemakers, that means that we also have to sacrifice from a point of privilege. So some of our best peacemakers have also been people who were in a position of significant power and authority and yet said, hey, I'm going to give that up. in order to move towards something better. And there are beautiful examples of that in the Book of Mormon. Alma, ultimately the sons of Mosiah, and Alma the younger. Lots of examples of leaders who said, I can have a certain kind of power and authority, but moving towards peace, moving towards Christ is actually asking me to give up worldly power and authority, sacrifice that, and start to move towards peace. They're really great leaders. in our own country who also follow that pattern.

(53:40-53:52) Patrick Mason: And actually, King and Gandhi are good examples of this. They could have lived, even though they were part of marginalized communities, Gandhi could have lived a comfortable life as a lawyer. King could have lived a comfortable life as a pastor.

(53:52-55:58) Jennifer Thomas: George Washington could have lived a very comfortable life under the authority of the king. He would have been an elite. So I think it's really important for us to acknowledge that whether we're coming at it from a position of, of oppression or whether we are coming at it from a position of comfort, being a peacemaker, what Christ has outlined for us, a pathway, is going to require sacrifice from us. And insofar as that relates to leaders, I think we always have to be very, very cautious when we are selecting leaders who tell us nothing will be required from us. We are going to get a magical society either by not giving up anything, giving up our sins to have that magical society, right? Or that there are going to be other people that that leader can get to pay so that we don't have to in any way be harmed or hurt. whether it's we're going to get other people to pay for things literally physically or whether we're going to get other people to, you know, bear the burdens of just anything in our society. So that, as I think one of the things that we really wanted to conclude with was just we don't hear sacrifice talked about a lot. In fact, we hear it denigrated a lot in our society. But for anyone who truly is a disciple of Jesus Christ, we are forced early on to wrestle with the fact that to follow him is to be willing to sacrifice. And that is one of the ways that when our lives are over, he will know us as his. And so we just would encourage you, as you start to think about how you're going to be selecting the society that we live in, making choices about that, to look towards leaders who both are A, willing to truly, humbly sacrifice, but also that they understand the value of asking us to sacrifice not just things but our sins that call us out when we're not being awesome.

(55:59-59:07) Patrick Mason: Fantastic. Can I conclude with—so we've talked about all these principles that we hope that people bring, you know, as they look at the ballot and as they go up and down and choose the people that they will lead our society for the next X number of years. But I just want to make a final plea, if it's okay, just for the act of voting. Is that okay? And I want to do this with a personal story, and I'll try to tell it quickly. So I lived in Egypt for a couple of years, and I was there from 2007 to 2009. It was during the 2008 election when Barack Obama was running against John McCain. And I was teaching American history. Most of my students were Egyptians and other Arabs. And I thought it would be kind of fun at this university in Egypt to have a mock election, right? Because I was teaching American history, American studies. So like, okay, we're in the midst of this. So I set up kind of in the main kind of opening or kind of like a quad in the middle of campus, I set up this big booth with like a McCain booth and Obama booth. And we had like their platforms listed out, you know, so people could come and see. And, you know, we had it up all day. So people could come and we bribe them with like candy if they voted or something like that. But anybody, faculty, staff, students, anybody could come and vote at these places. And so It was just kind of a fun thing to try to teach about American elections and so forth. Now, it won't shock you that in 2008, the Iraq war was ongoing, etc. It will not shock you. Who do you think won this election of people in the Middle East? Barack Obama did. It was a landslide. It was like 90% or something like that. But that wasn't the point. The point of the story is, so after this was done, I went back to the department office and we had this lovely Egyptian woman named Shireen who had helped me set everything up, set up the booths and everything. And I went back at the end of the day and I said, hey Shireen, how did you think it went? And she got kind of quiet. And she said, well, she said, you know, I think it went really well. It was a lot of fun. You know, we had a great turnout and everything. But she said, you know, it meant a lot to me. And she started crying. And she said, I know that this didn't matter. I know it was just for fun. I know it was just a mock election. But she said, this was the first time in my life that I actually had a choice when I voted. And so every time I vote, Jen, I can't help but think about Shireen and all of the Shireens all over the world. right, that either live in places where they don't get a vote or where their votes really don't matter, right? It's a sham of an election when they do vote. And so I just want to encourage everybody out there in the sound of my voice, right? I mean, vote for yourself, vote for the people around you, but also vote for the Shireens all around the world who do not have the privilege and the blessing of being able to actually choose their local, their national leaders.

(59:09-01:00:10) Jennifer Thomas: And I am gonna add one final push to that as well, which is there is no more peaceful way to transform your society than through the vote. Every other mechanism for bringing someone to power is going to involve more coercion, more violence, not less. And so if you truly are committed to a peaceful society, then be committed to democracy because it's a wonderful opportunity for people to exercise their own agency, and to do so in a way where we have a peaceful transfer of power, which is so important. It's a way for us to change our government without violence and always with the hope that if we didn't win, then next time we'll come around and work harder to argue our point. So I agree, Patrick. We just hope everyone in the sound of our voice applies the principles of peacemaking that we've shared today as they select their leaders, and then most importantly, does the hard and moral work of casting a vote.

(01:00:12-01:00:31) Patrick Mason: Thanks everybody for listening today. We really appreciate it. We just want to invite you to subscribe to the podcast and also to rate and review it. We love hearing feedback from listeners, so please email us at podcast at mweg.org. We also want to invite you to think about ways that you can make peace in your life this week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

(01:00:37-01:00:52) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you for listening to Proclaim Peace, a proud member of the Faith Matters Podcast Network. Faith Matters holds expansive conversations about the restored gospel to accompany individuals on their journey of faith. You can learn more about Faith Matters and check out our other shows at faithmatters.org.