The Peacegiver
Waiting for an Answer
Chapter 14
by James L. Ferrell

An excerpt from The Peacegiver, published by Deseret Book.

Grandpa Carson waited for a moment for some kind of a response, but Rick stood silently in thought.

“Let me put it this way, Ricky: Your children are suffering terribly in your home, as you are. Yet they are able to love those at whose hands they suffer, while you are struggling to do so. Why the difference, do you suppose? What difference between you and your children would explain the difference in your abilities to love?”

“Well, they’re mere innocents, Grandpa,” Rick said quickly. “They don’t know enough to know better.”

“Is your way the better way, Ricky?” his grandfather said in a large voice that seemed to overpower the wind. “Are you the one who knows the truth here? If your children were more knowledgeable, would they then know better than to love those who mistreat them? Is that your answer? Is that the enlightenment your children need?”

Grandpa Carson’s eyes flashed, and Rick cowered under their scrutiny and the force of his grandfather’s voice and conviction.

“Perhaps it is you who no longer knows enough, Ricky. Perhaps it is you who needs the education. And who better to teach you than those who suffer because of you.”

Rick felt tears begin to well up inside of him, both because his grandfather was so clearly disappointed in him and because he had so disappointed his children. He choked back the tears, half successfully, as his lids held the water from streaming down his cheeks.

“You said your children were mere innocents,” said Grandpa Carson, his voice now back to its normal volume and cadence. “With that statement you come so close to understanding something profound yet end up so far from it.”

He paused for a moment. “I want to ask you a question, Ricky. Who in the scriptures comes to mind as someone who was able to love others even though he was despised and abused by them?”

“The Savior, of course.”

“Have you ever wondered how he was able to do this?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t think we can begin to fathom the reasons. He is the Son of God, after all.”

“So it was his pedigree, then? It was because of his genes that he was able to love those who caused him to suffer—is that it?”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“No, it wouldn’t seem so, would it, as he commands us—no matter who our fathers and mothers may be—to love, just as he was able to, those who despitefully use us and persecute us. And if he commands us to love in just that way, then it’s pretty important that we understand why he was able to do so himself, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes,” Rick answered soberly.

“Well, let’s think about it, then. When you think about the Savior and what he did for us, what strikes you as particularly remarkable about him?”

“Everything,” Rick said, quite honestly.

“Let’s get specific.”

“Okay—well, he suffered for all of our sins, as we talked about with Abigail and David.”

“Yes, good. What else?”

“He loves all mankind, saint and sinner alike.”

“Yes, that’s right. Excellent. And what else?”

“Maybe the most amazing thing of all is that he never did anything wrong.”

“Exactly, Ricky, he never sinned toward anyone—including those who caused him to suffer. He never sinned at all.”

Grandpa Carson dipped his head down to intercept Rick’s gaze. “Now,” he said, having secured his attention, “do you notice anything similar about your children?”

Rick pondered for a moment. “Yes. They also love those who are causing them to suffer,” he lamented, his ache returning.

“Yes, they do. Anything else?”

“Like Christ, they’re not doing wrong toward me or Carol, either. Is that what you want me to say?”

“Ricky, what you say is only marginally important to me. What I care most about is how you feel about what you say. But let’s deal first with your words. Remember how you said that your children were ‘mere innocents’?”

Rick nodded.

“This is what I meant by you being close to a crucial understanding and yet so far away: The important difference between you and your children is not that your children are innocents but that they are innocent—that is, they are not doing wrong toward those who are creating difficulties for them.”

“What difference would that make?”

“What difference indeed,” his grandfather answered ponderously.

Rick hesitated. “I don’t understand, Grandpa. Why would that be the critical difference? And if it is, how could I ever hope for things to be better than they are? I’m not perfect, you know, and I’m not likely to be.”

“Your children aren’t perfect, either, Ricky. But such love is nevertheless found in them.”

“Then that cuts against what you just said: they’re imperfect, so they’re not innocent either. We’re not different in that respect at all.”

“Ah, now we’re to the point,” his grandfather said, almost to himself. “Think of Jonah over there,” he said, gesturing beyond the rock.

Rick turned to look at the limp figure under the sticks. There he sat, still slumped under the heat of the sun.

“He is a bitter man at the moment. He thinks he is in the ‘right’ here. In fact, he is so convinced of it, he’s willing to face off against the Lord. His is the cause of justice. Meanwhile, the Lord’s question hangs in the air, ‘Should not I spare Nineveh?’ 

“What do you suppose would happen, Ricky, if Jonah were to give up his belligerence and answered, both in word and feeling, ‘Yes!’? Do you suppose he would sit the same way under those sticks? Do you suppose his countenance would remain sour? Do you suppose he would continue to curse at the sun? Do you suppose he would feel the way he currently does about Nineveh?”

“No, probably not,” Rick answered.

“His world would change, wouldn’t it—not because he would be perfect but because he would recognize in that moment that he has no claim to perfection in others, that his and others’ hopes rest entirely on mercy, that he is entitled to nothing and grateful for everything. In that moment, he wouldn’t become perfect, but he would become innocent—innocent because he would have allowed the Lord’s offered mercy to well up inside of and change him into a new man, free from the clutches of sin.”

Grandpa turned back to Rick. “Notice something, Ricky. Jonah sits on this hill believing that the world will improve for the better only if there is some drastic change in Nineveh. David felt the same way about Nabal. That is why he started marching to Carmel—to inflict that drastic change. But David discovered through Abigail that the change that meant everything was not a change in Nabal but a change in himself—a change that is invited by the Lord’s question. The Lord is now offering Jonah the same discovery. The drastic changes we just imagined in Jonah don’t depend on Nineveh at all. Jonah is unhappy for one reason and one reason alone, and it is not the reason he thinks: Like David, he is unhappy not because of another’s sins but because of his own.

“This understanding is available merely from pondering the Savior’s atonement, for no amount of mistreatment and suffering was able to take away the love of One who was without sin. By contrast, we who still struggle with sinfulness, struggle as well to cover our sins. And one way we do this, the Savior taught, is by finding sinfulness in others. The beams in our eyes get us looking for the motes in others’.  Our own failure to love another causes us to see the other as being unworthy of love. So we end up sitting beneath our own canopies of sticks—irritated, angry, hurt—blaming our lack of love on the Ninevites we are failing to love. The Savior, by contrast, with no sins of his own to clutch, cover, and excuse, remained free to see all of mankind—each of us Ninevite in our sinfulness and in the pain we caused him—mercifully and gratefully.

“Your children answer ‘Yes’ to the Lord’s question, Ricky. They grant mercy to the Ninevites in their home, by throwing their arms around Nineveh every night. The secret of their love is not their naiveté—the fact that they are, as you said, mere innocents—but is rather their innocence from sin. Innocent as they are from sinfulness toward you, there are no sins they need to cover and excuse, and therefore no sins of yours can keep them from loving you.

“The question for you is what sins toward Carol keep you from loving her? How are you demanding justice and therefore denying mercy? In what ways are you sitting belligerently under the sticks of your own grudges? How are you the author of your own despair? If you allow yourself to discover answers to those questions, you, with your children, will answer ‘Yes!’ to the Lord’s question, and rediscover a Carol who is much less like Nineveh than you think she is—a Carol whom your children love every bit as much as they love you.”

His grandfather wiped his brow and looked eastward toward the mountains. “It’s time for me to go, Ricky. I leave you now with Jonah, and with his question. The city before you, as wicked as Jonah thinks it is, is saved. Will you be? Will he? That will depend entirely upon how you and he see the other Ninevites in your lives.”

“I have faith in you, Son,” he added after a brief pause. “You know the right, and you’ll find the way. I know you will.”

“Thanks, Grandpa. I hope you’re right. I’m not so sure.”

His grandfather took Rick in his arms in a warm embrace, the way he used to when Rick was about to go back home after a summer on the farm. “Good-bye, Son.”

“Good-bye, Grandpa. Will I see you again?”

“Perhaps.”

“I hope so.” Rick bit his lip to keep the tears at bay.

Grandpa Carson smiled, nodded his head, and said, “As much as I’d like that, my greatest hope is that you will see Carol again—as you used to, as the Lord sees her, as she is.”

With that, his grandfather set off for the mountains. He paused on the top of the next hill to the east and called, “Remember the Lord’s question, Ricky. And remember that no one is more Ninevite than you are.”

And then he was gone. Rick was alone with Jonah on the hillside, the sun beating mercilessly upon their heads.