For me, there were a few themes in the reading this week. I’ll focus on just two. There seemed to be a theme of trusting in the Lord, and prospering when we keep the commandments. I have never noticed how many times they link prospering in the land to keeping the commandments until now. This promise is repeated over and over throughout The Book of Mormon. I went and looked it up and the best that I was able to tell, there are at least 20 variations of this promise throughout The Book of Mormon.
That seems significant. So what are we exactly being promised if we keep the commandments of God? What does it mean to prosper? If we look up the word in the dictionary it can mean a few things. First, it means to “succeed in material terms; be financially successful.” Second, it means to “flourish physically; grow strong and healthy.” Third, it can mean to “make successful.” These scriptures appear to be saying that we will be financially well off, physically strong and healthy, and successful, when we keep the commandments. That’s a big deal.
I went to the thesaurus to make sure I knew what we might mean when talking of prospering. It said that variations of this word can mean to “bloom, blossom, do well, flourish, multiply, thrive, advance, arrive, increase, progress, be enriched, bear fruit, become wealthy, do wonders, fare well, go places, grow rich, hit it big, hit the jackpot, make a killing, make it, make money, and strike it rich.” Those all seem like things we would actually want in our lives. Really it appears to be telling us that we’ll be successful in all areas of our lives if we follow God. This really does appear to be the case when we observe some of our best examples of keeping the commandments like President Nelson or any of the apostles. They all have had full, rich, successful lives before they became apostles.
The reading this week is Alma teaching his sons. These are really good chapters because they show us what he thinks is most important for his kids to understand. He teaches them, “whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions . . .God has, by the mouth of his holy angel, made these things known unto me, not of any worthiness of myself; For I went about with the sons of Mosiah, seeking to destroy the church of God; but behold, God sent his holy angel to stop us by the way.” I liked this a lot because Alma is the example of what we’re striving to be, and earlier in his life he was the absolute worst. He’d done horrible things. God found a way to communicate with him where he was, not because of any worthiness on Alma's part. When being good or progressing seems too hard, it’s nice to realize that Alma was literally awful, going around trying to destroy the church of God, and God was still merciful to him. I think most of us, no matter what we’ve done, never sank to the depravity of Alma who had killed people, lead people away from the church, and tried to destroy Christ’s church. This story should give us hope that regardless of our mistakes, we're not too far gone that God doesn't want to, or can't, reach us.
I had an interesting discussion with a friend once, who pointed out that even though Alma’s conversion story involved an angel, it wasn’t the angel who converted him, but the introspection and the influence of the Spirit of God afterward. Alma talked about how he was tormented knowing the extent of his rebellion against God and all the things he had done wrong. He said that there was “nothing so exquisite and bitter as were [his] pains,” and that “there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was [his] joy.” It’s interesting that he would choose the same word to describe both his torment and his joy, so I looked up exquisite. The thesaurus showed synonyms like perfect, striking, incomparable, and matchless. Another source described exquisite this way, “Exquisite describes something that is lovely, beautiful, or excellent. Exquisite pain or agony is very sharp and intense.” So, it appears that exquisite, when describing either pain or joy is something that is all-encompassing, unparalleled, or overwhelming.
After Alma had this experience where his pain and agony was replaced by joy, he describes himself as being “born of God.” This is somethimes described as being “born again.” Mosiah 5:2 describes this state to us as when a person has “no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.”
Gospel is an old english translation of the Greek “Good News”, so the good news is that all pain and suffering in you can be traded for joy and happiness if we do what’s right and work on converting ourselves to God. This process is called repentance. Following God or Christ isn’t about apologizing repeatedly for violating rules, or submitting to people in authority over you, or submitting to society's training that tells us to be better because of an invisible God who we can’t see or know. Following God or Christ is about coming to understand the “good news” more and more, and realizing that living our lives within the parameter of a prescribed structure leads to success, prosperity, and a joy that can be described as exquisite. That’s what we’re striving for, even though we're all at various points in this process.
Alma had experienced both ways of life. He’d lived lawlessly and selfishly and he’d also lived lawfully (obeying commandments) and selflessly. He had experienced both and dedicated his life to teaching and proclaiming the good news not because he was supposed to, or because he’d been brainwashed, or because society had conditioned him to, but because he knew which was a more fulfilling, satisfying, and desirable way to live. If we haven’t discovered the good news or exquisite joy in our own lives, then our task isn’t to go around trying to convert others to a way of life or a framework of thought (a religion) that we ourselves haven’t fully embraced. Our task is to live our lives and figure it out. We can only bear testimony of the things that we know from experience.
Alma tells us from his experience that “I have been supported under trials and troubles of every kind, yea, and in all manner of afflictions; yea, God has delivered me from prison, and from bonds, and from death; yea, and I do put my trust in him, and he will still deliver me.” We’re told again that inasmuch as ye keep the commandments of God ye shall prosper in the land.
There are a lot of things I could write whole papers about. But I can’t write it all. So I’ll skip ahead. Alma reassures us that God “will fulfill all his promises which he shall make unto you.” I think maybe a lot of our greatest difficulties come from an inability to accept that God’s got this, that he isn’t a liar. That when he says things he means it. I think we all do it, but it’s very often hard to believe that things will happen a certain way or turn out a certain way when we just don’t see any possible way that it could. We're supposed to trust him when he tells us things, even when we don't understand the "how."
I really liked reading about the part where he says “yea, and cursed be the land forever and ever unto those workers of darkness and secret combinations, even unto destruction, except they repent before they are fully ripe.” He goes on to say that the Lord has said (about this land and the people on it) that “I will bring forth out of darkness unto light all their secret works and their abominations; and except they repent I will destroy the from off the face of the earth; and I will bring to light all their secrets and abominations, unto every nation that shall hereafter possess the land.” This reminds me of the scriptures that say in the last days all things shall be made known. One such scripture is Luke 12:3 that says “Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”
He repeats that “There is a curse upon all this land, that destruction shall come upon all those workers of darkness, according to the power of God, when they are fully ripe.” I like these scriptures because when we look at our country and the world and see murders plastered online, hatred, sexual exploitation of children, and everything else that’s overwhelming and horrible, it seems like bad is winning. However, these scriptures reassure us that those things can’t triumph, because God won’t let it. He’s promised that those who keep the commandments will prosper, and those who do horrible secret works of darkness will be exposed and destroyed. If that’s true, life could get really, really interesting as all the secret plots for power or money are exposed.
Alma compares the scriptures to the Liahona, and compares Lehi’s family’s ability to follow the Liahona to the promised land to our ability to follow the scriptures to our promised land. We don’t follow a direct course, not because God doesn’t want to lead us but because we forget to be faithful and diligent, so we don’t progress in our journeys. He says that when we’re slothful, we don’t prosper. Slothful can mean comatose, dallying, inactive, inattentive, lethargic, lifeless, listless, passive, sluggish, tired, unenergetic, slow, tired, or procrastinating. When we get tired and casual, we don’t make as much progress. Alma reminds us 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 that we’ll have peace to our souls. CS Lewis said something similar when he stated, “Life with God is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties.”
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