Monday, May 16, 2016

Alma 49-55 - The War Years of Moroni

Most of the rest of the Book of Alma deals with a series of wars between the Lamanites and the Nephites. These aren’t the only wars between the two peoples. In fact, their history is filled with them. So why did Mormon spend so much time on these wars if he wanted to deal with war and its effect on a society? He was involved in a lot of wars himself so he could have spoken with greater effect had he used his own stories. So, again, why?

I think it’s because they are more like us than any other culture in the Book of Mormon. They had “elected” judges and we have democratically elected politicians. They had a society where religion and politics were separated some what, while ours is much more so. Their biggest down falling was pride, so is ours. In their day, the religious were in the minority as it is today. The threats to their religious liberty and lifestyle were closest to the ones we face. And so he wrote about their wars for our benefit.

I also think this section of the book has more to say about our role as religious citizens of a country than any other in the Book of Mormon. We read about the terrible threat of internal dissension. The invading Lamanites weren’t as dangerous as were the Kingmen and Amalikiah or his brother Ammoron. They were such a great risk, Moroni gets special dispensation from the people to take draconian steps to crush the dissent. (Support us or die!) It was blunt and brutal and effective. It gives a clear lesson that the greatest enemies are the ones from within.

It also talks about keeping covenants in the face of great adversity. The Ammonites were about to renounce their covenant of peace to help the Nephites fight. It took a lot of persuading by Helaman and others to get them to change their minds. But it also led to the advent of the stripling warriors. These two thousand young men became the lynchpin of the Nephite defenses on a different front. I’ll write about them in more detail later.

The bottom line is, this is what God thinks your involvement in civic affairs and politics should be. He covers the spectrum from civic involvement all the way to direct combat with enemy forces.

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