Which Kind of -Ites? - On Descent and Decisions

While we were reading Alma 54 this evening, in which Captain Moroni discusses the exchange of war prisoners with Ammoron, the king of the Lamanites, my brother pointed out an interesting tidbit: Despite being the king of the Lamanites, Ammoron was not, himself, a Lamanite. His brother, Amalickiah, from whom he had inherited the throne, hadn't been a Lamanite either. Amalickiah was a Nephite who had tried to make himself king over the Nephites, even though the Nephites didn't have a monarchy at the time. When Captain Moroni thwarted Amalickiah's plans, Amalickiah went a joined the Lamanites, and used "treachery, murder, and intrigue to become king of the Lamanites" (Alma 47: chapter heading).

The rightful king of the Lamanites wasn't actually a Lamanite either; not anymore. He had been born a Lamanite, but he, his family, and many of his people were converted to the Lord by Aaron, a Nephite missionary. After that, they went and joined the Nephites, and, for all intents and purposes, became Nephites.

So the Nephites were being attacked by an army of Lamanites led by dissenting Nephites, while the true king of the Lamanites had essentially become a Nephite. I'm sure that there are many lessons we could learn from this. One possible lesson is that a person's heart says more about them than their blood does. At that time, whether a person was a Nephite or a Lamanite depended on what they did and who they lived with more than on who their ancestors were.

The same is true today. Our personal righteousness is just that: personal. It has nothing to do with how righteous or wicked our parents were, though having righteous or wicked parents can sort of lean us in one direction or the other. Whether we're one of the "good guys" or one of the "bad guys" depends entirely on whether our own actions are good or bad. Some "good guy" Nephites turned bad and became Lamanites, and some "bad guy" Lamanites turned good and became Nephites. While the terms "Nephite" and "Lamanite" had been used to distinguish those who had descended from one group of people from those who had descended from another, at a certain point, that simply wasn't true anymore. Descent was no longer a deciding factor in whether a person was a Nephite or a Lamanite; their decisions were.

Some of us may have had one or more "Lamanitish" parents, but that doesn't mean that we have to act Lamanitish as well. We have to choose our own place and make our own decisions. Similarly, even if we had "Nephitish" parents, we still have to decide for ourselves what kinds of people we'll be. Nobody is born evil. It may be that nobody is born good, either. Whether we end up being good or evil may be influenced by the actions and attitudes of our parents, but just as the Nephites and Lamanites could choose who they wanted to be, regardless of their parentage, so must we.