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Alma was at his paternal best in applauding his son Shiblon's strengths while drawing attention to potential weakness in a way that honored Shiblon's agency, invited his humility, and encouraged his ongoing righteousness. Courtesy of Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

The middle child, they say, is the forgotten one. Whether this popular stereotype is true can be left to social scientists and sibling rivals,[1] but in the case of Book of Mormon studies, Shiblon fits the mold. Pick up any commentary, and among the three sons of Alma the Younger, Helaman and Corianton will invariably receive closer attention. On the one hand, this benign neglect is understandable. A mere fifteen verses, the “middle-child message” contained in Alma 38 lacks the narratological and historiographical significance of Alma 36–37 (Alma’s message to Helaman) and the moral weight and doctrinal depth of Alma 39–42 (Alma’s counsel to Corianton). On the other hand, from both a paternal and pedagogical standpoint, Alma’s words to Shiblon provide a framework for self-understanding and self-improvement and a model for navigating interpersonal relationships that make this chapter as worthy of study and application as anything given to Shiblon’s more notable (or notorious) siblings. Arguably, no single chapter in the Book of Mormon illustrates more effectively the interrelatedness of strengths and weaknesses or suggests more insightfully how to safeguard virtue from degenerating into vice.

Shiblon’s Self-Evident Strengths

Despite Shiblon’s scholarly neglect, he was obviously loved and valued by his prophet-father, deemed of sufficient importance by Mormon to be included in his hyperselective “hundredth part” (Word of Mormon 1:5), and counted worthy to hold a brief stewardship of the Nephite records between the superintendence of his older brother Helaman and that of his nephew of the same name (see Alma 63:1–13). His father held him up as one whose “good example” and “nourish[ing]” counsel his wayward brother Corianton would be wise to follow (see 39:1, 10), and in the April 2015 general conference Elder Michael T. Ringwood did the same for the entire Church.[2]

Focusing on Shiblon’s strengths is easy because Alma lists them explicitly. He asks Corianton, “Have ye not observed the steadiness of thy brother, his faithfulness, and his diligence in keeping the commandments of God?” and laments, “Thou didst not give so much heed unto my words as did thy brother” (Alma 39:1–2). Speaking to Shiblon directly, Alma bestows praise no less pointed, commending “your steadiness and your faithfulness unto God” in one breath and “thy faithfulness and thy diligence, and thy patience and thy long-suffering” in the next (38:2–3). Rhetorically, Alma’s words are an example of polysyndeton (the repetition of conjunctions), a literary device meant to slow down a sentence by highlighting distinctly each item in a list, suggesting a father who wants to savor each of the Christlike attributes he sees in his son. Among these qualities, most remarkable to Alma was the “patience” Shiblon exhibited despite his sufferings among the Zoramites (v. 4), precisely the kind of “patience [despite] afflictions” for which Alma had prayed as the mission began (31:31).

On equal display among the Zoramites was Shiblon’s “wisdom” and his “much strength” (Alma 38:11), gifts of mind and might that Alma had asked God to grant to him and his companions (see 31:30–35). The Lord abundantly answered this prayer in Shiblon’s case, and Alma rejoiced in that blessing, expressing “great joy” in his son’s past and hope for the same throughout Shiblon’s future (see 38:2–3). This prayer was also honored, for when Mormon recounts Shiblon’s later stewardship over the Nephite records, he describes the older Shiblon as “a just man, [who] did walk uprightly before God; and [who] did observe to do good continually, to keep the commandments of the Lord his God” (63:2).[3] Shiblon had kept the records sacred (v. 13) and had kept himself worthy as well.

This glimpse into Shiblon’s character leaves the impression that his was an innate goodness, a near immunity to the natural man befitting someone who “commenced in [his] youth to look to the Lord [his] God” (Alma 38:2). Perhaps it is this one-sidedness that has led to his neglect, since readers tend to relate to characters with a fuller three dimensions, like the flawed heroes and sympathetic villains that populated Shakespeare’s plays. But in idealizing Shiblon, our initial read leaves his character underdeveloped, a whitewashed sketch instead of a finished portrait complete with facial lines and shadows. For this a second read is needed, one with an eye to Shiblon’s weaknesses, which were as discernible to Alma as his many strengths.

Shiblon’s Underlying Weaknesses

Compared to his manifest virtues, Shiblon’s deficiencies might not have been so obvious, meaning real discernment was needed to identify them—the kind of awareness that wise parents develop over time but that often remains underdeveloped in their children. Thus Shiblon himself may have been blissfully unaware of whatever weaknesses awaited his work, focused instead on those laudable qualities of which his father had been so proud. But it is that precise attribute—pride—that provides the key to unlock our closer reading, for once we see its presence, or even its potentiality, we begin to see related weaknesses waiting in the wings.

Pride is the first negative attribute Alma mentions (see Alma 38:11), and he invokes it somewhat indirectly, not to condemn Shiblon for displaying it (as he would with Corianton in 39:2) but rather to warn him against succumbing to it. After all, what would be more natural for someone possessing remarkable “wisdom” and “much strength” than to “boast” in it (38:11)? That said, once we see pride as a possibility for faithful Shiblon, we recognize its potential in other areas that Alma addresses. In this he illustrates the warning raised by President Dallin H. Oaks in an address that is central to our understanding of Alma 38, “Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall.” His caution: “[Satan] will approach us through the greatest talents and spiritual gifts we possess. If we are not wary, Satan can cause our spiritual downfall by corrupting us through our strengths as well as by exploiting our weaknesses.”[4]

This insight provides the negative formulation of the Lord’s positive promise to Moroni: that if people “humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (Ether 12:27). Strengths and weaknesses can thus be envisioned as a coin with both a positive and negative dimension—“heads” and “tails”—not merely as unconnected characteristics (a strength in one area and an unrelated weakness in another) but as interrelated aspects of the same underlying attribute (a single coin). Turning “weak things” into strengths, or allowing strengths to become our downfall, is thus a matter of flipping a particular quality from one side to the other. The corresponding strengths and weaknesses were connected and coexistent—one in an active and the other in a latent state—all along.

Shifting from scripture to psychology, the concept that Moroni and President Oaks are describing finds a parallel in the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who taught that good and evil are each “halves of a paradoxical whole.”[5] The good we prize and strive to personify, while the evil we shun or try not to acknowledge. Yet the two halves are inextricably linked, not unlike Lehi’s recognition that “it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). Jung calls this “negative side of the personality” the self’s “shadow,” home to those ignoble traits that lie hidden in darkness precisely because we prefer to bask in our more illuminating attributes. This shadow has been called “the blind spot of the psyche,” and because it contains elements of the self we prefer to ignore—“the unadmitted, the inadmissible”[6]—the weaknesses lurking beneath our strengths often go undiscovered or unacknowledged, which leaves them unaddressed and uncorrected. Thus Jung taught that “no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort,” work made difficult because it “involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.” But difficult or not, such effort is required, as it is “the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”[7]

Alma seems to intuit this fact and carefully shines the light onto Shiblon’s shadow side, though not in a way that leaves him blinded to the underlying strengths that define his noble character. In this Alma takes a step beyond Jung toward the correspondence of strengths and weaknesses suggested by Moroni and President Oaks, making this a key breakthrough of Alma 38. Few would deny that human nature includes both darkness and light, but Jung’s insight was in recognizing that the shadow must be acknowledged and integrated if it is not to be repressed and projected. What Jung left less developed, however, is the inherent interrelatedness of shadow and light, a connection that is suggested by Moroni and President Oaks and exemplified in Alma’s words to Shiblon. Like literal shadows, what Jung called the “inferiorities” of the shadow side tend to reflect the outlines of the object that originally cast them, even if the size and proportions may be skewed depending on the location of the light. In other words, potential vices are typically outgrowths of virtues run amok, a correspondence at the heart of Alma 38.

Shining Light upon the Shadow

To unlock this correspondence between virtue and vice, we return to Alma’s central caution: “See that ye are not lifted up unto pride; yea, see that ye do not boast in your own wisdom, nor of your much strength” (Alma 38:11). Once Alma’s warning against pride implicitly reveals the reality of Shiblon’s shadow side, Alma’s earlier words take on a more admonitory tone, though never a condemnatory one. For example, when Alma commends Shiblon for having “commenced in [his] youth to look to the Lord [his] God,” he adds his hope that he would “continue in keeping [God’s] commandments; for blessed is he that endureth to the end” (v. 2). Later he repeats the idea: “As ye have begun to teach the word even so I would that ye should continue to teach” (v. 10). Why the repetition? A potential problem of starting strong is the tendency later to succumb to complacency, a warning inherent in Aesop’s “The Tortoise and Hare” and one reason behind Oliver Cowdery’s failed attempt to translate the Book of Mormon (see Doctrine and Covenants 9:5). Alma repeats this warning a third time when he urges Shiblon, “See that ye refrain from idleness” (Alma 38:12), a caution that seems out of character for faithful, diligent Shiblon, unless light were to give way to corresponding shadow.

A more subtle caution may lie behind the ongoing emphasis on divine involvement that characterizes Alma’s counsel. When he applauds Shiblon for his patience amid persecution, he credits God’s presence even more than Shiblon’s forbearance: “Thou didst bear all these things with patience because the Lord was with thee.” He then reconfirms the intended lesson by repeating, “And now thou knowest that the Lord did deliver thee,” further reducing the possibility that Shiblon would take that credit to himself (Alma 38:4; emphasis added). God had similarly reduced the danger of Lehi’s family relying on the arm of flesh during their journey in the wilderness—essentially removing any flesh in which to trust by forbidding fire and providing direction only through miraculous means (the Liahona). By doing so God taught the Book of Mormon’s first family the same lesson Alma intended for his son: that they might “know that it is by me that ye are led,” not primarily by merely mortal endeavor (1 Nephi 17:13; emphasis added). As Shiblon needed to remember, it is only through the Savior’s grace that we can develop and maintain the Christlike attributes that defined him.

Building on the lesson Shiblon was hopefully learning, Alma presses his point in the next verse, exhorting his son to “remember” (since the competently self-sufficient can easily forget) “that as much as ye shall put your trust in God even so much ye shall be delivered out of your trials, and your troubles, and your afflictions, and ye shall be lifted up at the last day” (Alma 38:5). The conditional construction of Alma’s phrase (“as much as . . . even so much”) creates a causality of direct proportions, and his focus on “trust in God” roots Shiblon’s deliverance in a strength outside his own. To emphasize the point he is making, Alma then shares his conversion story (vv. 7–8), providing a condensed version of what he had shared with Helaman, but for essentially the same purpose: to credit God for the experience he is sharing and for the relevant lessons learned. As he explained in both instances, “Now, my son, I would not that ye should think that I know these things of myself, but it is the Spirit of God which is in me which maketh these things known unto me; for if I had not been born of God I should not have known these things” (v. 6; see also 36:3–5). In Helaman’s case Alma concludes his conversion story by reiterating that God is the source of his knowledge, that God is his sole deliverer, and that in God he would place his trust (see 36:26–28). In Shiblon’s case Alma gives the same moral to the story, but with even greater emphasis on God’s irreplaceable role: “I have told you this that ye may learn wisdom, that ye may learn of me that there is no other way or means whereby man can be saved, only in and through Christ. Behold, he is the life and the light of the world. Behold, he is the word of truth and righteousness” (38:9). Though the written text leaves us guessing at intonation, one can imagine Alma speaking these words with emphasis on a very pointed third-person pronoun. “Behold, he [not you] is the life and the light of the world. Behold, he [not you] is the word of truth and righteousness.”[8]

The final third of Alma’s message to Shiblon likewise focuses on the dangers of pride, but holds up the Zoramites as a cautionary tale. In this Alma externalizes Shiblon’s potential pride, “projecting” (to borrow Jung’s concept) that shadow onto a far more visible wall, not to excuse Shiblon from acknowledging it within himself but rather to allow him to recognize it in others and avoid taking a similar course. The Zoramites “pray[ed] to be heard of men” and hoped “to be praised for their wisdom” (Alma 38:13), one of the exact attributes Alma had identified in Shiblon. By alerting Shiblon to a sin in others linked to a strength he shared with them, Alma could address his son indirectly rather than accusatorily, warning him against a weakness that could easily develop in him. As he cautioned more directly, “Do not pray as the Zoramites do. . . . Do not say: O God, I thank thee that we are better than our brethren.” Instead, pray, “O Lord, forgive my unworthiness, and remember my brethren in mercy—yea, acknowledge your unworthiness before God at all times” (vv. 13–14).

Here again Alma’s pronouns are revealing. He begins with the third-person plural to single out the Zoramites for condemnation: “They pray to be heard of men.” He then identifies with the problem by putting the Zoramites’ words in his own mouth (but includes Shiblon by using the first-person plural): “Do not say: O God, I thank thee that we are better than our brethren.” He next offers an improvement on their prayer in the first-person singular, teaching Shiblon by example: “O Lord, forgive my unworthiness, and remember my brethren in mercy.” Finally, he shifts to the second-person singular and speaks directly to his son: “Acknowledge your unworthiness before God at all times” (Alma 38:13–14; emphasis added). In this way Alma adeptly avoids the mistake Jung warned against, that of projecting one’s shadow onto others to avoid acknowledging it within oneself. Alma circumvents this tendency by reversing it, shining light on the Zoramite shadow in hopes that Shiblon would recognize its potential projection onto himself. Noting the congruence of these shadowy contours, the diligent missionary to the Zoramites could then become an introspective missionary to himself.

Balancing Between Extremes

Beyond recognizing the shadow of pride cast by the strengths of Shiblon’s character, Alma draws his tightest connections between virtue and vice in 38:12, which we will study in a moment. First we must return to the coin analogy. What causes a trait to flip from heads to tails is when a strength becomes too top-heavy—that is, when it is taken to an unhealthy extreme. Recognizing this danger, President Oaks uses the words excess or excessive nine times in his aforementioned talk, warning of “extreme manifestations” of otherwise laudable attributes and quoting President Boyd K. Packer’s concern that apostasy often comes when true principles become “exaggerated and distorted.” What is needed, President Oaks implores, is a disciplining of our desires in order to avoid “the fringes of orthodoxy.” Put more simply, we must develop balance and avoid extremes. We do this by neither “exceed[ing] orthodoxy” nor “fall[ing] short of it,” by neither “discounting” God’s commandments nor “multiplying them.” Only then can we avoid succumbing to the potential weaknesses that are inherent in particular strengths. What President Oaks is defining is a “Goldilocks zone” of sorts, with extremes avoided and balance attained at a golden mean of opposite attributes, examples of which he provides in abundance: seeking inspiration and exercising agency, serving with zeal and contentment, pursing lofty ends and using righteous means, leading powerfully and meekly. Again, striking the proper balance is key: between ambition and humility, study and faith, tolerance and truth. Notes on the gospel keyboard must be joined and counterbalanced by different but related keys, creating chords that provide welcome richness and needed depth through their harmonization.[9]

This was Alma’s emphasis in verse 12; for as he saw it, the key for his son would be to remain within that Goldilocks zone, balanced between opposite but related extremes. Yes, Shiblon should continue to “use boldness” (a trait that often comes naturally to those blessed with wisdom and strength), but he would have to beware that his boldness not become “overbearance,” a tendency that those traits likewise make more likely. With apathy (too cold) at one extreme and overbearance (too hot) at the other, Shiblon’s innate strengths made him more susceptible to the latter than the former, unless he overcorrected and did too little rather than too much, something Alma’s warnings against “idleness” or nonendurance seem meant to address.

Alma’s second statement in verse 12 echoes and augments the first, but its audience tends to be misattributed. The counsel “bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love” tends to be associated with Corianton, since his unbridled passions led him to commit immoralities with the harlot Isabel (see Alma 39:3–4, 9, 11). However, it is Shiblon, not Corianton, who receives these words. There is no evidence that immorality was a weakness for Shiblon, and given the faithfulness and obedience that defined him, he likely would have shuddered at the thought of such sin. More likely still is that he shuddered at Corianton’s actions and judged him harshly as a result. Thus in Alma’s model prayer—“Do not say: O God, I thank thee that we are better than our brethren; but rather say: O Lord, forgive my unworthiness, and remember my brethren in mercy” (38:14)—he may have used the word brethren most intentionally.

This, after all, would be more in keeping with the kinds of “passions” a person like Shiblon would instinctively feel. His steadiness, faithfulness, and diligence were likely motivated by his “passion” for truth and righteousness. But those virtues make it all the harder to be “filled with love” toward those who have fallen into vice. This was the problem of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son (as well as the audience whom Jesus addressed), a story that perfectly captures the potential dynamics between obedient Shiblon and his less disciplined younger brother. The same could be true of Shiblon’s attitude toward the Zoramites, whom Shiblon may have taught diligently without loving sincerely. If he suffered their scorn out of a sense of superiority, for example, instead of out of grief and pain that their wickedness could never bring them happiness—feelings that Alma felt keenly in that context (see Alma 31:24, 30–32)—then his patience and long-suffering would have been prideful and self-centered, based more in a love for being right than in a love for God and neighbor. Though no less passionate about truth than his son was, Alma had felt the proper love toward the Zoramites, acknowledging that “their souls [were] precious” to both God and to himself (v. 35). In Shiblon’s case, only by bridling those impersonal passions could he be filled with personal love for those he served.

Keeping boldness from becoming overbearance and bridling passions to be filled with love are perfect examples of keeping virtues from becoming vices by reining in extremes. Beyond this there remains a final piece of advice that exemplifies the kind of balance that Alma is encouraging, and it involves a different kind of correspondence between characteristics. To this point we have been linking strengths and weaknesses in Alma 38, but in what might be this chapter’s greatest principle, the more important connection is between strength and countervailing strength. It is here that Alma illustrates the wisdom suggested by Joseph Smith’s profound comment “By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.”[10] “Contraries”—or paradoxes, as we might call them—manifest truth by balancing pairs of seemingly contradictory principles. By coupling opposite but interrelated strengths, each virtue keeps its counterpart from becoming a vice, for tethered together these strengths do not devolve into their related weaknesses. After all, when anchored to its opposite, no attribute can drift into its extreme form. Like two spinning magnets that lock into place once opposite poles come in contact, two related coins (each with its own heads and tails) keep each other from flipping. Balance is thus achieved and maintained by holding to both sides of a positive paradox, of which the scriptures are full: justice and mercy, faith and works, mind and heart, and more.

This is the grand insight that G. K. Chesterton captured so eloquently when he held that “Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.” When correctly balanced, these contraries keep “the old Christian virtues [from going] mad,” a madness that results when virtues “have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.”[11] Thus opposite strengths can be kept strong instead of settling for some type of middle-ground moderation. Properly balanced, Shiblon could afford to be passionate about the truth because he would also be filled with love for those he was teaching; he could afford to be bold because he would also be aware of his audience. The central contrary Alma had in mind for Shiblon would keep all of his strengths strong, with none of them turning into weaknesses: he was to be “diligent and temperate in all things” (Alma 38:10).

Diligence, as Alma noted earlier, came naturally to Shiblon (see Alma 38:3). It was temperance that would require more conscious effort. But temperance is what keeps boldness from overbearance and what bridles passion so that love can reign instead. Temperance keeps us from looking beyond the mark or running faster than we have strength. Temperance, by its very nature, settles comfortably within the Goldilocks zone as it seeks the golden mean. And coupled with diligence, it keeps diligence from becoming overzealous, even as diligence keeps temperance from becoming apathetic. Like the “righteousness and peace” that “kissed each other” in the Psalms (Psalm 85:10), these positive polarities are a heaven-made match, and they would ensure that Shiblon stayed balanced as he continued coming unto Christ.

Conclusion

In Alma 38, Alma shows no less thoughtfulness and insight when counseling Shiblon than he does in his more recognizably masterful discourses to Helaman and Corianton. What he does, ingeniously, is applaud Shiblon for his strengths explicitly and alert him to his weaknesses implicitly, doing so in a way that reveals the inherent interconnectedness between his light and shadow sides. Consequently, this perceptive parent is able to praise without fawning and to caution without condemning, helping his stalwart but potentially self-satisfied son to find balance at a behavioral, psychological, and spiritual golden mean. Understanding the framework Alma’s counsel provides allows readers to find similar equilibrium, keeping virtues from becoming vices by coupling them with countervailing Christlike attributes.

It is in facilitating Shiblon’s recognition of weakness that Alma is at his paternal best. He draws attention to weakness in a way that honors Shiblon’s agency, invites his humility, and encourages his ongoing pursuit of the all-sufficient God of grace. Most notably, Alma identifies a particularized interconnectedness between weaknesses and strengths and gently calls attention to the first even while focusing almost exclusively on the second. It would remain for Shiblon to recognize and implement the principles we have been teasing out here, a process that his subsequent righteousness suggests he admirably accomplished.

Whether this study of Alma 38 has readers putting themselves in the place of Shiblon or thinking of other Shiblons the Spirit has brought to mind, the principles that Alma teaches his son are widely applicable and powerfully effective. Seeing the shadow side of strengths increases awareness of self and empathy for others. Once we learn to recognize the inherent interrelatedness of strengths and weaknesses, and once we discover and develop the relevant set of “contraries”—those polar positives that keep our virtues from devolving into vice—we will find ourselves balanced safely in the center of the strait and narrow way. As Alma taught Shiblon, the way to find that balance is “only in and through Christ” (Alma 38:9). His virtues never turned into vices, and his “grace is sufficient” to turn our weaknesses into strengths (Ether 12:27).

Notes

[1] Literature on birth order, both popular and academic, is vast but has failed to achieve broad consensus as to the effects of birth order on personality, intelligence, or life outcomes. See, for example, Rodica Ioana Damian and Brent W. Roberts, “Settling the Debate on Birth Order and Personality,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, no. 46 (November 17, 2015): 14119–20.

[2] Michael T. Ringwood, “Truly Good and without Guile,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2015, 59–62.

[3] For additional references to Shiblon’s ongoing valiant service (often couched in phrases like “Helaman and his brethren” or “Alma and his sons”), see Alma 43:1–2; 45:15, 22–23; 46:1, 6; 48:18–20; 49:30; 53:14; 62:45.

[4] Dallin H. Oaks, “Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall,” BYU devotional, June 7, 1992, 2, https://speeches.byu.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Oaks_Dallin_1992_06.pdf.

[5] Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniela Jaffé, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, rev. ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963), 329.

[6] Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Child and the Shadow,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 32, no. 2 (April 1975): 140.

[7] Carl Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 2nd ed., trans. R. F. C. Hull (New York: Bollingen, 1959; repr., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 8–10.

[8] This emphasis on the Savior’s role—his grace—is also explicit in Ether 12:27, as well as in Jacob 4:7, which teaches the same truth in similar language.

[9] See Oaks, “Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall,” 1–8. For an extended treatment of this idea, see Spencer J. Condie, In Perfect Balance (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1993).

[10] Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1980), 6:428. In the original manuscript in which this statement appears, contraries was spelled “contrarreties.” “Letter to Israel Daniel Rupp, 5 June 1844,” [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-israel-daniel-rupp-5-june-1844/1.

[11] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane, 1908; reprint, 1914), 174, 53.