And the Lord God said unto me: They shall be a scourge unto thy seed, to stir them up in remembrance of me; and inasmuch as they will not remember me, and hearken unto my words, they shall scourge them even unto destruction.
After Lehi dies (in chapter 4), Nephi continues teaching Laman and Lemuel. However, they are angry with him, and now that Lehi is gone, they try to kill him. Even when Nephi prays specifically for his brothers because of their anger, they only get more angry, so that Nephi and those who will join him are forced to sneak away and travel for days through the wilderness to form a new settlement. The Lamanites (those who stayed with Laman and Lemuel) are cursed with a skin of blackness, and part of that curse is that they become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety.
This mischief and subtlety causes the Lamanites to be a scourge to the Nephits. A scourge is a whip or some other means of inflicting pain and suffering as a form of punishment, with the intent of correcting or reforming. The Lord uses the Lamanites to punish the Nephites with pain and suffering so that they will remember him. If the scourging doesn't make them remember him, they will keep getting scourged until they are destroyed.
At first it seems really unfair that the Nephites, who were the righteous of the two groups, would be punished like this. They are the ones who loved God and followed Nephi. Why do they get punished? Why are the Lamanites, who are wicked, used by God as instruments to punish the righteous? I think the answer lies in the purpose of the punishment. The Nephites are allowed to suffer at the hands of the Lamanites as a way to remember God. The Lamanites are given no such memory tool. It is far better to remember God than to forget him, even if we have to have our memories jogged by a little pain and suffering.
The times in my life when I've remembered the Lord the most, or when he's been at the forefront of my conscious mind, are usually the times either during or right after some painful experience. Pain has the tendency to turn our thoughts heavenward. I learn from this verse that one of the purposes of pain and suffering is to help us remember the Lord when we start to get a little forgetful. This realization makes the pain more bearable. I also learn from this verse, though, that if we fail to remember the Lord while we're being scourged, we might end up being scourged to death.
As I study the lives of my ancestors, I'll look for times they were scourged and remembered the Lord because of it. And as I write in my own journals, I'll try to explain how scourging has helped me remember the Lord.
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