Teancum in 2020

The ancient story of Teancum has been on my mind a lot lately. Regardless of whether you believe that this actually happened, it’s still a very powerful story with a strong message.

Teancum (pronounced tee-ANN-come) was a brave, noble, and genius military leader among his people, the Nephites. At this time in his life, there had been political discord regarding form of leadership. A man named Amalickiah had started a petition to remove the standing form of government and replace it with a monarchy (with him being the king). While he did have a following, the voice of the people went against him.

Amalickiah was angered so much by the result that he left his city and joined with the Lamanites (with whom they had previously been at war). Through flattery and treachery, he got into good graces with their king, plotted and carried out the king’s assassination, married the queen, and angered the Lamanites into starting another war.

Two of Amalickiah’s followers realized that things had gone too far. They fled back to the Nephites, telling them everything. Thus, as these new battles commenced, Teancum knew that Amalickiah was the instigator. After careful planning, Teancum took another person with him into Amalickiah’s war camp during the night, threw a javelin into his heart so that he died instantly, and left without being detected. The death was not discovered until dawn, at which point the Lamanite army scattered and their previously planned attacks were not realized.

Fast forward seven years. Amalickiah had a brother. His name was Ammoron and he took his brother’s place as king. Ammoron was angered by the murder of his brother and had been holding a grudge since he was killed. He had been preparing for those seven years to execute a revenge attack against the Nephites.

As the next series of battles commenced, Teancum began to embrace his anger. Amalickiah’s arrogance had cost thousands of lives—needless bloodshed—on both sides. So, in his anger, Teancum did not plan as he snuck into Ammoron’s war camp alone. When he finally found Ammoron’s tent, he once again threw his javelin. This time, however, the javelin struck near Ammoron’s heart, giving him time to scream and awaken his guards. Teancum was chased down, captured, and killed.

While there’s a lot that could be taken out of this story, my intention in sharing was to put emphasis on one specific thing:

What happens when we allow anger to fuel our thoughts and actions?

Anger is an emotion that we all have. It alerts us to something that doesn’t sit right in our minds. It acts as a defense mechanism to hide our fears and insecurities. It helps us realize that action is needed to correct a wrong, be it in our personal lives or in society. Some things cause more anger than others. But for all of us, there’s usually one or two things that can throw us over the edge unless we put effort into consciously reigning anger in. In these situations, anger can become a destructive force if we choose to use it as a battle cry instead of a warning sign.

What happens when anger becomes our battle cry? Here’s what we can learn from just this story:

1. We do not create good environments for cooperation, compromise, and understanding.
2. We become closed off to any perspective but our own.
3. We become defensive and assume the worst in people.
4. We fuel anger in others, thus causing them to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.
5. We lose our ability to see reason.
6. We cause others to begin living in fear which, in turn, can lead to anger.
7. We ruin friendships and relationships, sometimes not even our own.
8. We act on impulse; we fail to plan.
9. We do something with the right intentions and it goes terribly wrong.

Mark twain is quoted as saying that “anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” When I think about times in which I have been angry, I realize that the ones that worry me the most are the times when I lashed out in anger and did not regret my actions afterward—when I used it is as battle cry. Acting in such a way means that I successfully felt justified in treating another human being as someone lower than myself in order to feel satisfied or worse, get revenge. 

Anger has cost millions of lives, caused hundreds of international disputes, and made more enemies than friends. It has ruined marriages and started family disputes that spanned generations. Conversely, our world’s greatest, most revered, and highly esteemed stories are the ones in which people chose not to use anger as a battle cry. The most respected family and community members are the ones who reached out in love and said, “let’s put an end to this. Let’s figure this out together.”

Anger stops where love starts.